he gave orders for his guests to be seized,
fettered and carried off to a distant portion of
his territories to be executed. The reason of
this act of treachery was a report that had
reached his ears of the intention of the council
to apply to the emperor for a charter constituting
Salzburg a free city. This act, however, seems
to have excited less indignation amongst the
body of the burghers, owing to the class hatred
entertained for the wealthy town patricians
whom it immediately concerned.

As for the peasants in the Salzburg lands,
they, like other peasantries on ecclesiastical
domains, had a standing quarrel with their
lord, and had more than once risen against
what they deemed unjust exactions during the
latter half of the preceding century. It was
natural, therefore, that the great popular wave
0f 1525 should not have passed over the town
and country of Salzburg without leaving its
impression.

The then Archbishop Matthaus Lang came
to his see in 1519. He had sprung from a
patrician family of the town of Augsburg, and
by cunning and diplomacy had attained to one
of the wealthiest and most powerful sees in the

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