OF THE TURKS
DCCXXVI.
The Turk is a crafty and subtle enemy, who wars not only with great power and
boldness, but also with stratagem and deceit; he makes his enemies faint and
weary, keeping them waking with frequent skirmishes, seldom fighting a complete
battle, unless he have tolerable certainty of victory. Otherwise, when a battle
is offered him, he trots away, depending on his
stratagems.
DCCCXXVII.
The power of the Turk is very great; he keeps in
his pay, all the year through, hundreds of thousands of soldiers. He must have
more than two millions of florins annual revenue. We are far less strong in our
bodies, and are divided out among different masters, all opposed the one to the
other, yet we might conquer these infidels with only the Lord's prayer, if our
own people did not spill so much blood in religious quarrels, and in
persecuting the truths contained in that prayer. God will punish us as he
punished Sodom and Gomorrah, but I would fain `twere by the hand of some pious
potentate, and not by that of the accursed Turk.
DCCCXXVIII.
They say the famine in the Turkish camp, before
Vienna, was so great that a loaf of bread fetched its weight in gold, whereas
Vienna and the archduke's army had all things in abundance. This victory is
evidently the work of God. The Turk had sworn to conquer Germany within the
year, and had unfurled a consecrated standard, but he was put to the rout
without accomplishing anything of importance.
DCCCXXIX.
On the last day of July, 1539, came news that
the king of Persia had invaded the states of the Turk, and that the latter had
been obliged to withdraw his forces from Wallachia. Dr. Luther said: I greatly
admire the power of the king of Persia, who can measure his strength with an
enemy so formidable as the Turk. Truly, these are two mighty empires. Yet
Germany could well withstand the Turks if she would keep up a standing army of
fifty thousand foot, and ten thousand horse, so that the losses by a defeat
might be at once repaired. The Romans triumphed over all their enemies, by
keeping constantly on foot forty-two legions of six thousand men each,
disciplined troops, practiced in war.
DCCCXXX.
News came from Torgau that the Turks had led out
into the great square at Constantinople twenty-three Christian prisoners, who,
on their refusing to apostatize, were beheaded. Dr. Luther said: Their blood
will cry up to heaven against the Turks, as that of John Huss did against the
papists. `Tis certain, tyranny and persecution will not avail to stifle the
Word of Jesus Christ. It flourishes and grows in blood. Where one Christian is
slaughtered, a host of others arise. `Tis not on our walls or our arquebusses I
rely for resisting the Turk, but upon the Pater Noster. `Tis that will
triumph. The Decalogue is not, of itself, sufficient. I said to the engineers
at Wittenberg: Why strengthen your walls - they are trash; the walls with which
a Christian should fortify himself are made, not of stone and mortar, but of
prayer and faith.
DCCCXXXI.
The Turks are the people of the wrath of God.
`Tis horrible to see their contempt of marriage. `Twas not so with the
Romans.
DCCCXXXII.
Let us repent, pray, and await the Lord's
will, for human defense and help is all too weak. Five years since, the emperor
was well able to resist the Turks, when he had levied a great army of horse and
foot, out of the whole empire, Italians and Germans. But then he would not;
therefore, meantime, many good people were butchered by the Turks. Ah, loving
God, what is this life, but death! there is nothing but death, from the cradle
unto old age. I fear all things go not right; the tyranny and pride of the
Spaniards, doubtless, will give us over to the Turks, and make us subject to
them. There is great treachery somewhere. I doubt the twenty thousand men, and
the costly pieces of double cannon are willfully betrayed to the Turk. It is
not usual to carry such great pieces of ordnance into the field. The emperor
Maximilian kept them safe at Vienna. It seems to me, as though he had said to
the Turk: take these pieces of ordnance as a present; slay and destroy all that
cannot escape. This expedition has an aspect of treachery; for while our men
slumber, the Turk constantly watches, attempting all he can, both with open
power and with secret practices.
If the Turk were to cause proclamation to be
made, that every man should be free from taxation and tribute for the space of
three years, the common people would joyfully yield to him. But when he had got
them into his claws, he would make use of his tyranny, as his custom is, for he
takes the third son from every man; he is always father of the third child.
Truly, it is a great tyranny, which chiefly concerns the princes of the empire
themselves. I ever held the emperor in suspicion, yet he can deeply dissemble.
I have almost despaired of him, since he opposed the known truth, which he
heard at the Diet at Augsburg. The verse in the second Psalm holds ever good:
"Why do the heathen so furiously rage together, and why do the people imagine a
vain thing? The kings of the earth stand up, and the rulers take counsel
together, against the Lord, and against his anointed," etc. David complained
thereof, Christ felt it, the apostles lamented it; we feel it too. `Twas
therefore St Paul said: "Not many wise even after the flesh, not many mighty,
not many noble are called." Let us call upon God the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ; let us pray, for it is high time.
DCCCXXXIII.
The admirable great constancy of John, prince
elector of Saxony, is worthy of everlasting memory and praise; who personally
and steadfastly held over the pure doctrine of the Gospel at the imperial diet
at Augsburg, 1530. And, unhappily, Germany is a prey to discord all this time.
See how furious a hate the papists bear to the partisans of the Gospel. They
have put their faith in the emperor against us, but they will come to
confusion. A certain count had a great bonfire lighted in the night, when he
learned the arrival of the emperor in Germany; and a popish priest, near
Eisenach, said, he would bet all the cows he should have in the year, that
Martin Luther and his adherents would be hanged before Michaelmas. These
fellows thought it only needed for the emperor to march against the Lutherans,
and they cherished horrible projects; but they were finely disappointed.
The emperor of the Turks maintains great pomp in
his court. You have to traverse three vestibules before you reach the apartment
wherein he sits. In the first vestibule are twelve chained lions; in the
second, an equal number of panthers. He has under his rule very rich and
populous countries; even within the last ten years, the number of his subjects
has greatly increased.
The 21st of December, 1536, George, marquis of
Brandenburg came to Wittenberg, and announced that the Turks had obtained a
great victory over the Germans, whose fine army had been betrayed and
massacred; he said that many princes and brave captains had perished, and that
such Christians as remained prisoners, had been treated with extreme cruelty,
their noses being slit, and themselves used most scornfully. Luther said: We,
Germans, must consider hereupon that God's anger is at our gates, that we
should hasten to repentance while there is yet time; by degrees, he subjugated
the Saracens, who before were the lords of Syria, Asia, the Land of Promise,
Assyria, Greece, and a portion of Spain. These Solyman utterly overthrew and
well nigh annihilated. `Tis thus God plays with kingdoms, as in Isaiah, it is
threatened: "I the Lord am a strong God over kingdoms; whoso sinneth I
destroy." The Venetians made no resistance. They are effeminate and pretend not
to be warriors. `Tis wonderful what progress the Turk has made in the last
hundred years, yet that is nothing in comparison with the progress the Roman
empire made in fifty years, though, during twenty-three years of the fifty, it
had to maintain a terrible war with Hannibal. Such was its aggrandizement, that
Scipio declared it advisable that in the public prayers the petition for
extended domination should be omitted, it being his opinion that now they had
better see to the taking care of what they had got. Yet God overthrew this
mighty empire by the hands of barbarians.
DCCCXXXV.
The elector of Saxony wrote to Dr. Luther that
the Turks had gained a great victory. Cazianus, Ungnad, Schlick, had all been
brided by the enemy, and their names were now placarded all over Vienna, as
condemned traitors. These generals led the German army close to the Turkish
camp; a Christian who had made his escape from the infidels, cane and warned
them to be on their guard, but they treated his counsel with contumely. When
the enemy approached, these traitors took to flight, with the cavalry,
abandoning the infantry to slaughter. The Turks next feigned a retreat,
whereupon the Christian generals ordered the cavalry, eleven hundred in number,
to return to the charge, but the Turks surrounding them, cut them in pieces
also. Cazianus had received eighteen thousand ducats from the Turks through a
Jew, to betray the Christian army, and had promised to deliver the king himself
into the enemies hands. Luther, on hearing this news, said: Auri sacra
fames, quid non mortalia pectora cogis? This traitor must everlastingly
burn in hell. I would not betray a dog. I much fear it will go ill with
Ferdinand, who has allowed so great an army to be thrust into the throat of the
Turk, by the hands of a perjured Mameluke, who heretofore fell from the Turk to
the Christians, and now has fallen again from the Christians to the Turk.
Our princes and rulers ought to march in person
against the enemy, and not have him thus encountered; the Turk is not to be
condemned. Truly, we Germans are jolly fellows; we eat, and drink, and game at
our ease, wholly heedless of the Turk. Germany has been a fine and noble
country, but `twill be said of her, as of Troy, fuit Llium. Let us pray
to God, that, amidst such calamities, he will preserve our consciences. I dread
lest the money and forces of Germany become exhausted, for then, perforce, we
must yield to the Turk. They reproach me with all this; me, unhappy Martin
Luther. They reproach me, too, with the revolt of the peasants, and with the
sacramentarian sects, as though I had been their author. Often have I felt
disposed to throw the keys before God's foot.
The Turks pretend, despite the Holy Scriptures,
that they are the chosen people of God, as descendants of Ishmael. They say
that Ishmael was the true son of the promise, for that when Issac was about to
be sacrificed, he fled from his father, and from the slaughter knife, and,
meanwhile, Ishmael came and truly offered himself to be sacrificed, whence he
became the child of the promise; as gross a lie as that of the papists
concerning one kind in the sacrament. The Turks make a boast of being very
religious, and treat all other nations as idolaters. They slanderously accuse
the Christians of worshipping three gods. They swear by one only God, creator
of heaven and earth, by his angels, by the four evangelists, and by the eighty
heaven-descended prophets, of whom Mohammed is the greatest. They reject all
images and pictures, and render homage to God alone. They pay the most
honorable testimony to Jesus Christ, saying that he was a prophet of preeminent
sanctity, born of the Virgin Mary, and an envoy from God, but that Mohammed
succeeded him, and that while Mohammed sits, in heaven, on the right hand of
the Father, Jesus Christ is seated on his left. The Turks have retained many
features of the law of Moses, but, inflated with the insolence of victory, they
have adopted a new worship; for the glory of warlike triumphs is, in the
opinion of the world, the greatest of all.
Luther complained of the emperor Charles
negligence, who, taken up with other wars, suffered the Turk to capture one
place after another. `Tis with the Turks as heretofore with the Romans, every
subject is a soldier, as long as he is able to bear arms, so they have always a
disciplined army ready for the field; whereas we gather together ephemeral
bodies of vagabonds, untried wretches, upon whom is no dependence. My fear is,
that the papists will unite with the Turks to exterminate us. Please God, my
anticipation come not true, but certain it is, that the desperate creatures
will do their best to deliver us over to the Turks.
DCCCXXXVI.
Luther wrote a letter to the emperor's chief
general in Hungary, admonishing him that he had against him four powerful
enemies; he had not only to do with flesh and blood, but with the devil, with
the Turk, with God's wrath, with our own sins; therefore he should remember to
humble himself and to call upon God to help.
Luther heard that the emperor Charles had sent
into Austria eighteen thousand Spaniards against the Turk. Whereupon he sighed,
and said: `Tis a sign of the last day when those cruel nations, the Spaniards
and Turks, are to be our masters: I would rather have the Turks for enemies
than the Spaniards for protectors; for, barbarous tyrants as they are, most of
the Spaniards are half Moors, half Jews, fellows who believe nothing at all.
The great hope I have is, that the Turkish empire
will be brought to an end by intestine dissensions, as it has been with all the
kingdoms of the world, the Persian, the Chaldean, the Alexandrian, the Roman: I
hope the four brothers, the son of the great Turk, will dispute the sovereignty
among themselves. Whoso climbs high, is in danger to fall; the best swimmer may
be drowned. If it be the will of God, though the Turk has climbed high, he may
fall to pieces in a moment.
DCCCXXXVII.
The Turk will go to Rome, as Daniel's prophecy
announces, and then the last day will not be very distant. Germany must be
chastised by the Turks. I often reflect with sorrow, how utterly Germany
neglects all good counsel. Victory, however, depends not on ourselves. There is
a time for conquering the Turks, and a time for being conquered. The king of
France long exalted himself in his pride, but in the end he was abased and made
captive. The pope long despised God and man, but he too is fallen. They say the
pope lately celebrated the circumcision of four of his sons, and invited the
great khan, the king of Persia, and the chiefs of the Venetians, to the
ceremony. He is extremely venerated by his subjects. He gives the people a
passport, called vich, the bearer of which passes safely throughout the Turkish
dominions, and is freely lodged wherever he goes.
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