In Against the Robbing Murderous Hordes of Peasants he encouraged the nobility to swiftly and violently eliminate the rebelling peasants, stating,"[the peasants] must be sliced, choked, stabbed, secretly and publicly, by those who can, like one must kill a rabid dog. He even argued that every Christian should obey the temporal ruler without question and, if requested, should serve as an executioner for a tyrant. [63], After the 1930s, Günter Franz's work on the peasant war dominated interpretations of the uprising. While the men served, others absorbed their workload. In approximately two hours, more than 8,000 peasants were killed. Accordingly, the harshness of the lesser nobles' treatment of the peasantry provided the immediate cause of the uprising. For example, on 23/24 June 1525 in the Battle of Pfeddersheim the rebellious haufens in the Palatine Peasants' War were decisively defeated. Guild taxes were exacted. The second was an organized inter-regional revolt that claimed its legitimacy from divine law and found its ideological basis in the Reformation. Social classes in the 16th century Holy Roman Empire, Twelve Articles (statement of principles). [15] The introduction of military science and the growing importance of gunpowder and infantry lessened the importance of heavy cavalry and of castles. In this multi-layered authority, during the Peasants' War, the abbey-peasants revolted, plundering the abbey and moving on the town. 1.On the surface, the peasants were crushed, their demands denied, and many executed. In 1289, King Rudolf of Habsburg granted special privileges to the urban settlement in the river valley, making it a free imperial city. On 14 May, they warded off smaller feints of the Hesse and Brunswick troops, but failed to reap the benefits from their success. The lack of cavalry with which to protect their flanks, and with which to penetrate massed landsknecht squares, proved to be a long-term tactical and strategic problem.[32]. The fighting was at its height in the middle of 1525. They chose to rob the nobility's houses and burn them down. In this tract, Luther instructed the German Nobility to strike down the peasants as one would kill a mad dog. [24] The use of the landsknechte in the German Peasants' War reflects a period of change between traditional noble roles or responsibilities towards warfare and practice of buying mercenary armies, which became the norm throughout the 16th century. 4. The Peasant War of 1524-1527 was crucial in the development of the Reformation. As the uprising spread, some … Click to see full answer. They used these traditional entitlements to seize more of the peasants’ wealth through taxes and dues.[3]. He could not support the Peasant War because it broke the peace, an evil he thought greater than the evils the peasants were rebelling against. The burghers also opposed the clergy, whom they felt had overstepped and failed to uphold their principles. It suggested that in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, peasants saw newly achieved economic advantages slipping away, to the benefit of the landed nobility and military groups. They were quite mobile, but they also had drawbacks: they required a fairly large area of flat terrain and they were not ideal for offense. The German peasant rebellion of 1525 wasn't the only uprising in Central Europe: the Jacquerie in France in 1356-1358, the Peasant's revolt of 1381 in England, the Rebellion of the Remences in Spain in 1462 and 1485 and many others, are other manifestations of the social struggles in Medieval Europe. The German Peasants Revolt took place in the lands of the Holy Roman Empire. c. Criminals kidnap a famous politician. In 1381, a vast rebel army ransacked the Tower of London, burned the palaces and assassinated government officials. At Waldburg-Zeil near Würzburg they met the army of Götz von Berlichingen ("Götz of the Iron Hand"). Edward’s … However, the Knights' Revolt was not fundamentally religious. This was the first important battle of the war. [46], The Twelve Articles demanded the right for communities to elect and depose clergymen and demanded the utilization of the "great tithe" for public purposes after subtraction of a reasonable pastor's salary. (Document 11 Count Wilhelm von Henneberg) Drastic measures taken by the peasants struck the economy and honor of the upper classes. When the smoke cleared 100,000 peasants were dead. [47] (The "great tithe" was assessed by the Catholic Church against the peasant's wheat crop and the peasant's vine crops. This position alienated the lesser nobles, but shored up his position with the burghers. [17] Engels held that the Catholic monopoly on higher education was accordingly reduced. Roman civil law advantaged princes who sought to consolidate their power because it brought all land into their personal ownership and eliminated the feudal concept of the land as a trust between lord and peasant that conferred rights as well as obligations on the latter. [19][20] The clergy who did not follow Luther tended to be the aristocratic clergy, who opposed all change, including any break with the Roman Church.[21]. Parliament gave up trying to control the wages the landowners paid their peasants. The war was thus an effort to wrest these social, economic and political advantages back. Martin Luther, however, condemned the revolt, thus contributing to its eventual defeat. Peasants’ War, (1524–25) peasant uprising in Germany. Trains (tross) were sometimes larger than the fighting force, but they required organization and discipline. They failed to achieve any of their aims, and the existing elite only became more entrenched. He dispatched a guard of light horse and a small group of foot soldiers against the fortified peasant position. Labor shortages in the last half of the 14th century had allowed peasants to sell their labor for a higher price; food and goods shortages had allowed them to sell their products for a higher price as well. An imperial knight and experienced soldier, although he had a relatively small force himself, he easily defeated the peasants. Being basic taxpayers peasants dramatically suffered from those new homages[2]. It failed because of intense opposition from the aristocracy, who slaughtered up to 100,000 of the 300,000 poorly armed peasants and farmers. Many of the rebels had been inspired by Luther and had hoped that he would join them and even lead them. What were the causes of the Northern Renaissance? As the guilds grew and urban populations rose, the town patricians faced increasing opposition. He condoned the elite’s domination of the new Church and theology that justified and promoted the existing social and economic system. [53], On 29 April the peasant protests in Thuringia culminated in open revolt. Others sought to escape across the Danube, and 400 drowned there. Some of the articles also demanded that ‘tithes’ or payments to the church be only spent locally and that local communities had a greater role in their churches' governing. The poorer clergy, rural and urban itinerant preachers who were not well positioned in the church, were more likely to join the Reformation. The bands varied in size, depending on the number of insurgents available in the locality. Luther and his supporters were fearful that their movement could become tainted by association with the Peasants Revolt. Certain territories in upper Swabia such as Kempton, Weissenau, and Tyrol saw peasants create territorial assemblies (Landschaft), sit on territorial committees as well as other bodies which dealt with issues that directly affected the peasants like taxation. Some bands could number about 4,000; others, such as the peasant force at Frankenhausen, could gather 8,000. Luther and others sought to distance themselves from the War and supported the nobility and the Swabian League unequivocally. The Revolt reinforced Luther’s innate conservatism. Their luxurious lifestyle drained what little income they had as prices kept rising. On 16 February 1525, 25 villages belonging to the city of Memmingen rebelled, demanding of the magistrates (city council) improvements in their economic condition and the general political situation. Peasants’ Revolt, also called Wat Tyler’s Rebellion, (1381), first great popular rebellion in English history. Many of the religious sects that emerged after the Peasants War were millenarian movements. The plebeians comprised the new class of urban workers, journeymen, and peddlers. The growing costs of administration and military upkeep impelled them to keep raising demands on their subjects. [47], Kempten im Allgäu was an important city in the Allgäu, a region in what became Bavaria, near the borders with Württemberg and Austria. The progress of printing (especially of the Bible) and the expansion of commerce, as well as the spread of renaissance humanism, raised literacy rates, according to Engels. [60] Using Karl Marx's concept of historical materialism, Engels portrayed the events of 1524–1525 as prefiguring the 1848 Revolution. The Bishop of Augsburg, for example, had to contribute 10 horse (mounted) and 62 foot soldiers, which would be the equivalent of a half-company. Historians have tended to categorize it either as an expression of economic problems, or as a theological/political statement against the constraints of feudal society. Each company, in turn, was composed of smaller units of 10 to 12 men, known as rotte. [57], Freiburg, which was a Habsburg territory, had considerable trouble raising enough conscripts to fight the peasants, and when the city did manage to put a column together and march out to meet them, the peasants simply melted into the forest. While the famous Twelve Articles of the Swabian peasants were certainly not composed by Müntzer, at least one important supporting document, the Constitutional Draft, may well have originated with him. 1. [42] The uprising stretched from the Black Forest, along the Rhine river, to Lake Constance, into the Swabian highlands, along the upper Danube river, and into Bavaria[43] and the Tyrol.[44]. It was the climax of … Luther only wanted people to see the Catholic Church as something that was not sanctioned by God. Engels' analysis was picked up in the middle 20th century by the French Annales School, and Marxist historians in East Germany and Britain. The ring was the decision-making body. [16] At odds with other classes in Germany, the lesser nobility was the least disposed to the changes. The patricians consisted of wealthy families who sat alone in the town councils and held all the administrative offices. Since the quantity of working class peasants dropped greatly, many survivors saw themselves differently. The Peasants' Revolt, Tyler’s Rebellion or Great Rising of 1381 was one of a number of popular revolts in late medieval Europe and is a major event in the history of England.The names of some of its leaders, John Ball, Wat Tyler and Jack Straw, are still familiar even though very little is actually known about these individuals. Starting in the 1970s, research benefited from the interest of social and cultural historians. [64], Meanwhile, historians in East Germany engaged in major research projects to support the Marxist viewpoint.[65]. In the early 16th century, no peasant could hunt, fish, or chop wood freely, as they previously had, because the lords had recently taken control of common lands. At the time of the Peasants' War, Charles V, King of Spain, held the position of Holy Roman Emperor (elected in 1519). To be effective the cavalry needed to be mobile, and to avoid hostile forces armed with pikes. The Protestant Reformation, begun with Martin Luther’s posting of The Ninety-Five Theses in 1517, rapidly escalated into an evangelical reform movement that transformed European Christianity. This sometimes meant producing supplies for their opponents, such as in the Archbishopric of Salzburg, where men worked to extract silver, which was used to hire fresh contingents of landsknechts for the Swabian League. The democratic nature of their movement left them without a command structure and they lacked artillery and cavalry. Luther's Reformation became an increasingly conservative movement. This led to growing frustration among many, which led directly to the Radical or the Popular Reformation. Although Blickle sees a crisis of feudalism in the latter Middle Ages in southern Germany, he highlighted political, social and economic features that originated in efforts by peasants and their landlords to cope with long term climate, technological, labor and crop changes, particularly the extended agrarian crisis and its drawn-out recovery. Why did the Reformation fail in Renaissance Italy? The first, spontaneous (or popular) and localized revolt drew on traditional liberties and old law for its legitimacy. [10] [5] Many educated peasants had also been disappointed with the course of the Reformation and they believed that it did not go far enough and they wanted a more radical church, one that was not hierarchical and dominated by the local notable. In the final weeks of 1524 and the beginning of 1525, Müntzer travelled into south-west Germany, where the peasant armies were gathering; here he would have had contact with some of their leaders, and it is argued that he also influenced the formulation of their demands. Using Karl Marx's concept of historical materialism, Engels portrayed the events of 1524–1525 as prefiguring the 1848 Revolution. Casualty figures are unreliable but estimates range from 3,000 to 10,000 while the Landsknecht casualties were as few as six (two of whom were only wounded). [1] The Revolt involved peasants and merchants, artisans, members of the minor nobility, and Protestant pastors. Within days, 1,200 peasants had gathered, created a list of grievances, elected officers, and raised a banner. Key to Franz's interpretation is the understanding that peasants had benefited from the economic recovery of the early 16th century and that their grievances, as expressed in such documents as the Twelve Articles, had little or no economic basis. The Peasants soon became radicalized, and the largest band was led by the radical preacher Thomas Muntzer. However, this dissatisfaction with Luther and his teachings became more pronounced after 1524-1527. The victors destroyed their farming implements and homes and increased their tax burdens. This League was a military alliance, and it formed its own army. Authority should not be challenged in any way this League was a military alliance, squadron... 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