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They then settled down to the slower but safer process of siege, considering it easier to starve out than to fight out their enthusiastic opponents. One of the two leaders of the citizens, John Matthiesen, made a sortie against the troops with only thirty followers, filled with the idea that he was a second Gideon, and that God would come to his aid to defeat the oppressors of His chosen people.
The aid expected did not come, and Matthiesen and his followers were all cut down. His death left John of Leyden supreme. He claimed absolute authority in the new "Zion," received daily fresh visions from heaven, which his followers implicitly believed and obeyed, and indulged in wild excesses which only the insane enthusiasm of his followers kept them from viewing with disgust.
The new-comers were received with enthusiasm, and the people of Münster quickly fell under the influence of two of their fanatical preachers, John Matthiesen, a baker, of Harlem, and John Bockhold, or Bockelson, a tailor, of Leyden. Münster soon became the seat of an extraordinary outburst of profligacy, fanaticism, and folly.
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