Believe what you want, but the peasants cried out for Luther,who was just as instrumental in putting them down once he realized that his words had power. The Germans ate their own in the Thirty Years War. And, as an historian, myself, I believe (with Hillaire Belloc) that the Reformation would not have survived had it not also been imposed by a ruthless Henry VIII upon England, where it was by and large not a popular movement at all. Nevertheless, to each his own. Pax vobiscum. Ave Maria.
Actually, I think that Luther really began to oppose the Peasant’s Rebellion following the Weinsberg Massacre, when the Duke of Helfenstein and about 70 other nobles were forced by the rebels to run the gauntlet of pikes. I know that Luther didn’t support further extension of the popularizing and equalizing facets of his religious ideas. He was afraid that the princes, burghers and the class of town patricians would all fall away from support of the new German church if he threathened their position. He based his position on St. Paul’s doctrine of Divine Right of Kings in his epistle to the Romans 13:1–7, which says that all authorities are appointed by God, and shouldn’t be resisted. Members of the poorer clergy, most famously, Thomas Müntzer, supported the demands of the peasantry, including political and legal rights. Although Müntzer was a religious leader, he was less worried about religious questions than in the social position of the people. Müntzer’s concentration on the secular rather than the religious, became more pronounced as the war progressed. I know that Luther was just a man, and just as fallable as everyone else.