Daily Life During The Reformation (32 page)

Governments were unable or unwilling to quarter soldiers in
the countryside between battles and inflicted them on the local towns and
villages. Soldiers commandeered peasant houses and farms, requisitioned what
they wanted, and had the weapons to back up their demands. At their own
expense, the peasants were obliged to feed them and their horses and work for
them such as doing laundry and cooking. If soldiers wanted meat, the farmer’s
pigs and cattle were slaughtered. In short order, the farmer’s livelihood could
be ruined and his family left hungry.

Fighting between peasants and soldiers or between army
units at the local taverns was common. When all had enough drink, arguments
ensued, knives unsheathed, and killings occurred. Hatred between troops and
peasants was palpable.

CAMP FOLLOWERS

Camp followers were motley groups that formed an integral
part of the army. They included provisioners, carters, odd-job men, peddlers,
gamblers, and women who tended the sick and wounded, did the laundry, carried
soldiers’ goods and camp amenities on their backs, and also sold sexual
services.

While wives and children often accompanied the campaigns,
most camp followers were prostitutes and knaves looking for easy money. Women
and gambling often led to disputes among soldiers and even the occasional
murder. These military hangers-on also had to eat and shared in the plunder of
farms and shops when rations and pay for the soldiers were not forthcoming. By
the time a town had been thoroughly sacked by an enemy army, little remained,
except remnants of walls. Often half or more of the population lay dead and in
some cases, the site abandoned.

KNIGHTS

Along with the growing importance of gunpowder in the field
of battle, the heavy cavalry of knights, once protected by their armor, became
obsolete; at the same time, the strategic importance of their castles, now
subject to cannon fire, diminished. Their self-indulgent lifestyle used up most
of their income and as costs of living continued to rise, many took it upon
themselves to exercise their ancient right of plundering the countryside by
means of highway robbery and ransoming prisoners in order to squeeze what
profits they could out of their territories.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, open pillage by
knights was sanctioned as an honorable pursuit. Belligerent relations between
knights and towns whose wealthy citizens were waylaid and robbed along the
trade routes leading to and from the cities were taken as a matter of course.
Although knights and the town patricians were continually quarreling, the
knights were often in debt and attacking the merchants, holding them prisoner
in their castles until they extracted a ransom.

Knights’ social privileges had been based on the assumption
that they owed service in war when called by the king. In exchange they
received land (and its tenants) that supported their way of life. Knights paid
no taxes, but nor did they receive pay. They provided their own horses, trappings,
and support troops; but by the end of the century, as firearms came into use,
the heavy lance they used had disappeared. This move from the lance to firearms
progressed irregularly. Heavy lances were used by the Spaniards throughout the
century, while Henri IV’s army in France did not use them at all.

If the knights were kept fighting for very long, they often
left the field of their own accord, especially if their own property was in
danger, or if the collection of ransoms and plunder was not going well.

In the early part of the century, foot soldiers with
firearms were brutally treated if they were unlucky enough to be captured by
knights who felt that these low-born men with their long-distance weapons could
kill their betters without the decency of face-to-face combat. By the end of
the century, firearms had become the normal fighting weapons.

A leader of robber-knights in Germany, Hans Thomas was
known to rob even the poorest people and to maim and cripple his victims. In
June, 1522, he hacked off the right hand of a wretched craftsman, although the
man begged him not to destroy his means of earning his living.

The following August, Hans attacked a Nurnberg tanner and a
cutlery repairer, whose hands were similarly removed, gathered up, and sent to
the burgermeister of Nurnberg with a warning that Hans Thomas would deal with
everyone who came from the city in a similar manner. In spite of their mutual
antagonism, the princes, as overlords, did not hesitate to shelter knights; so
strong was their opinion with regard to the inviolability of the privileged
noble class, no matter what they did. It was felt by many that a knight must
live in a style befitting his rank; and if he had to resort to robbery, it must
be respected as his only resource and was a legitimate means of livelihood for
an aristocrat.

In 1524 when, spurred on by Luther’s teachings, the
Peasants’ War broke out, German Protestants were divided along class lines
between peasants and Protestant aristocrats. The peasants began taking over farms
and mines owned by nobles, but Luther sided with the aristocrats who only
wanted clerical not social reforms. He demanded the peasants put down their
arms and surrender their farms. Radical peasants believed Luther had betrayed
them.

Luther expressed his views on war in 1526 stating in effect
that the sword was instituted by God to punish evil and protect the good;
therefore, God directed everything connected with war. Luther had no problem
with mercenaries, considering their service to be like any other occupation. He
thought, however, that many soldiers were inspired by the devil.

DESERTERS

Often commanders took attrition into account when
calculating numbers of soldiers needed to fight, but the appalling conditions
encountered during war often became unbearable so that sizable units abandoned
their positions to the enemy, which was preferable to starving, being maimed,
or both.

In 1576, the Spanish army, fighting in Flanders, lost some
50,000 men to desertion. Such men flooded Europe as rogues and bandits, robbing
farms and villages, often with impunity. Some made it back to their homes where
they were either accepted or driven away.

14 – MEDICINE

Treatment
of disease and other ailments had advanced little in the sixteenth century from
ancient times. Galen, a highly-revered second-century medical practitioner,
believed disease resulted from an imbalance of the four humors that were
thought to be responsible for a person’s temperament. This view, going back to
the ancient Greeks, prevailed among doctors to the sixteenth century.

Luther did not seem to have much faith in the physicians of
his time, believing that a preacher would have more effect on spiritual
disorders. Further, in the case of physical sickness, one would do as well to
follow a good diet and go to bed early rather than see a doctor. He did not
object to doctors, per se, but felt that the devil sometimes caused one to be
ill, and only with God’s help could the patient be cured through prayer and
faith. Luther’s view of medicine was typical of the time when he stated:
“Experience has proven the toad to be endowed with valuable qualities. If you
run a stick through three toads, dry them in the sun, and apply them to any
pestilent tumor, they draw out all the poison and the malady will disappear.”

HUMORS AND VAPORS

The four main bodily fluids, or humors, were embedded in
the belief that human beings and their food were composed of the elements that
constituted the universe, that is, air, fire, water and earth.

Within the body, these elements formed four corresponding
humors: blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm; each one displayed two of the
four primary qualities: hot, cold, wet, and dry. When they were out of balance,
the best cure was to prescribe substances with opposing qualities. For example,
a fever could be cured with ice water and herbs considered cold (such as
hemlock), while those herbs or plants thought to be hot, peppers, for example,
should be given to someone who was listless and unresponsive.

CAUSE OF DISEASE

Unsanitary conditions, especially in the cities, promoted
the spread of disease. Domestic waste (human and animal) contaminated
everything, and the rise in the numbers of rats, fleas and body lice brought
epidemics that took the lives of the old and the young in particular.

THE PLAGUE

The scourge of the plague that appeared in different places
at different times was a major concern for everyone, high or low, on the social
hierarchy. Diseases such as this were accepted by all, including physicians, as
God’s will and as a punishment for the sins of mankind.

It was recognized that the plague was highly contagious,
but how it was spread remained a mystery. All doctors were aware that corpses
of victims of plague should be avoided, that their houses should be closed, and
that possessions should be burned. Because people believed no one could be
infected while attending a religious service, they crowded around burial pits
at funerals. One of many treatments for the plague consisted of holding a
plucked chicken against the sores to draw out the poison. For the plague, like other
diseases, it was thought that the cure lay in bringing the humors back into
balance.

OTHER COMMON DISEASES

Tuberculosis took a high toll in the Early Modern Period,
but other diseases were also common that partially accounted for the loss of
life. Influenza, dropsy (the swelling of soft tissues caused by the
accumulation of excess water), smallpox, dysentery, diphtheria (a bacterial
infection that spreads quickly and easily among people living in crowded or
unclean conditions), typhus, and syphilis through sexual contact were always
present dangers. The latter, a debatable New World disease with purplish
eruptions on the body was sometimes mistaken for other ailments such as the
plague. Under such circumstances medical practitioners could do little more
than bleed the patient and call on the blessings of the saints.

CONSULTATION

In their examinations of patients, doctors consulted not
only medical texts but also books on astrology, numbers, and the Bible to
project the length, severity, and eventual outcome of an illness. They often
wanted to know the patients horoscope and sometimes gazed at the planets to
determine if the time for treatment was auspicious.

DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT

Most physicians rarely touched a patient physically, unless
taking a pulse or checking a fever. Instead they relied upon the examination of
excrement looking at consistency, odor, and shade. An ‘informed’ physician
could identify more than a score of different colors and densities of urine and
describe the significance of each. To the well-trained physician, such nuances
might indicate lack of vitality, the presence of a melancholy humor, digestive
disorder, or dropsy.

The ground-up penis of a boar was believed to act as a cure
for pleurisy, grease was applied to burns, pigeon dung was used for irritations
of the eyes, and powdered animal bone was supposed to cure deafness. It was
believed that a wart could be removed by placing a dead mouse on it. Another
cure advised using camphor in vinegar to rid the patient of scaly skin.

Although some treatments included chemicals such as zinc
and arsenic, these often damaged the patients. Most popular were natural
treatments such as herbs, and although they sometimes worked, no one knew why.
For fevers in general, some of the remedies included mixing an egg yolk with
aqua vitae, which was then taken by the patient. Fever caused by a wound
involved the application of hot oil to the injured part to bring the fever
down. To induce sweating, a few bruised aniseeds were mixed with hot posset ale
(spiced milk curd made by pouring hot milk into ale) and drunk each time the
patient began shaking. If he or she sweated too much, linseed and lettuce had
to be beaten together and applied to the stomach and replaced every four hours.
Other basic remedies included roses or lavender for headaches, roasted onion
put inside the ear for earache, wormwood, mint and balm for stomach ache, and
licorice and comfrey for lung diseases.