Melchior Hoffmann, the most striking of their early leaders, a fervent and uneducated fanatic, driven from place to place, wandered from Sweden and Denmark to Italy and Spain [Sidenote: 1530-1533] preaching chiliastic and communistic ideas.

Only for three years was he much in the Netherlands, but it was there that he won his greatest {244} successes.

Appealing, as the Anabaptists always did, to the lower classes, he converted thousands and tens of thousands of the very poor--beggars, laborers and sailors--who passionately embraced the teaching that promised the end of kings and governments and the advent of the "rule of the righteous." Mary of Hungary was not far wrong when she wrote that they planned to plunder all churches, nobles, and wealthy merchants, in short, all who had property, and from the spoil to distribute to every individual according to his need.

[Sidenote: October 7, 1531] A new and severer edict would have meant a general massacre, had it been strictly enforced, but another element entered into the situation.

The city bourgeoisies that had previously resisted the government, now supported it in this one particular, persecution of the Anabaptists.