They [Sixteenth-century Anabaptists] were, without exception, fervent millenarians – convinced that the Second Coming would occur within a few months or years and determined to assist a vengeful Christ to reclaim his earthly kingdom, thus triggering the bloody occurrences prophesied in the Book of Revelation. To Anabaptists, those verses were no allegory. They were sure that Revelation described a literal series of events, which would begin with the construction of a new Jerusalem on earth, and end in an apocalypse that would consume all those who had not accepted the new faith.
The first Anabaptists firmly believed it fell tot hem to build this new Jerusalem, and their faith thus led them inexorably into conflict with the civil authorities of western Europe. Several bloody attempts were made to seize control of this city or that, and in 1534 thousands of members of the church streamed into he Westphalian town of Münster, expelled all nonbelievers, and held the place for 16 months.
The reprisals were appalling; when the Anabaptist “kingdom” eventually fell, every defender capable of bearing arms was slaughtered, together with hundreds of women and children. A similar fate befell the members of another party, 40 strong, who stormed the town hall in Amsterdam in the hope of sparking a revolution there, while in Friesland – already a great stronghold of the faith – another group of 300 radicals was besieged within an old Cistercian abbey that its members had fortified and proclaimed their own Jerusalem. After the walls had been systematically leveled by artillery fire, the male survivors were hung or beheaded on the spot, and their women taken to the nearest river to be drowned.
Source:
Dash, Mike. “The Heretic.” Batavia's Graveyard. Three Rivers Press, 2003. 39, 40. Print.
Further Reading:
I wanted to write up a post on this going into more detail about what happened, but it seems there are very few good English sources.