The German Peasants War was a vicious armed struggle that began as a popular revolt of the peasants in Germany in 1524 and soon became a civil war that spread throughout a large portion of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation under the Habsburgs. This armed conflict ended in 1525, when the peasants and craftsmen were defeated by the powerful aristocrat armies, which were composed of professional Knights and soldiers with military experience in the European wars. Thus, the princes and feudal lords were able to quell the rebellion, with the use of artillery, cavalry, and firearms.
The struggle of the peasantry against the feudal Lords had begun to grow stronger in the late 14th and 15th centuries due to social inequality, exploitation, and the abject social condition of the serfs. However, owing to economic advances at the beginning of the 16th century (above all, the inception and development of early capitalist relations) intensified during the Reformation period. Thus, the armed uprising of the peasantry took on new importance. The peasants wrote their demands in a document known as the Twelve Articles, which were the first proclamation of human rights and civil liberties written by the working classes before the French Revolution.
The Peasants War was the culmination of the social movement characterized as the first great battle against feudalism and the first act of the bourgeois revolution in Europe. Most of the peasants had been influenced by the Protestant Reformation as they believed in the free interpretation of the Bible, which had already been produced by the hundreds of thousands due to a new revolutionary invention: the printing press, conceived by Johannes Gutenberg around 1452. The revolt was supported and instigated by radical Christian reformers, such as Thomas Müntzer. (Martin Luther was against the peasants' rebellion and betrayed them, giving his support to the German princes).
In June 1524 peasant disturbances that had broken out in the southern Black Forest soon turned into an open uprising. The ties between the insurgents and the popular currents of the Reformation were extremely important for the further development of the movement. The revolutionary propaganda of the supporters of Thomas Müntzer, leader of the masses of peasants and plebeians, was spread primarily by the Anabaptists. It contributed to the consolidation of the demands of the peasants and the lower strata of the towns into a common program of the struggle of the oppressed people against all masters. The first program containing the idea of the overthrow of the social system (the Letter of the Twelve Articles (Artikelbrief) was written in late 1524 or early 1525 by circles close to Müntzer. It called for a struggle to achieve the complete emancipation of the “poor and common people” from the oppression of all masters and authorities and for the reorganization of life on the basis of the “common good” and “divine law.”
Between February and March 1525, there was another outburst of peasant revolts as more and more of them became massive open rebellion. In Upper Swabia, which became the center of the uprisings in the spring of 1525, large armed peasant detachments were formed, including the Baltringen, Allgäu, and Lake groups. Like other regions enveloped by the Peasant War, Upper Swabia was deluged not only with the revolutionary propaganda of the partisans of Müntzer, which attracted the poor strata of the peasantry and the urban plebeian masses, but also with the propaganda for moderate tactics, which called on people to seek the reduction of feudal burdens through negotiations. The ideological source of the moderates’ propaganda, which expressed the attitudes of the prosperous peasants, the leaders of peasant detachments, and radical burgher elements, was the teaching of the Zurich reformer H. Zwingli, who had many supporters in southwestern Germany, especially among the burghers.
The peasant and plebeian movement unfolded with particular force in central Germany, especially in northern Franconia and the region of Thuringia and Saxony. In northern Franconia the Bildhausen and Aura monasteries, which were occupied by the peasants in early April 1525, became bases for the movement. Many cities and knightly castles submitted to the powerful peasant camps, formally accepting the Twelve Articles. In Thuringia and Saxony the uprising was led by Munzer himself. The center of the rebel-lion was the city of Mulhausen, where, as early as Mar. 17,1525, a coup led to the establishment of a revolutionary government. In Thuringia the insurgents occupied cities, castles, monasteries, and manorial estates and partitioned the property of the feudal lords among the peasants and townspeople, proclaiming their actions the beginning of the establishment of universal human equality within and outside the country. It was the culmination of the entire Peasants' War. However, Müntzer’s goal of centralizing the rebels’ efforts and creating in Thuringia a revolutionary center for the whole uprising failed, owing to the peasants’ inability to rise above local interests. No match for the princes’ troops, which were equipped with artillery and led by Landgrave Philip of Hesse, Müntzer’s small, poorly armed detachment was defeated at Franckenhausen on May 15, 1525. Captured by the princes, Müntzer was subjected to agonizing tortures and executed on May 27. On May 25, Mulhausen was taken by the princely troops without a fight.
The peasant movement reached its peak in mid-April and May 1525. Scholars estimate that at least 100,000 people took part in the Peasant War during these months. The uprising spread to new regions, such as Wurttemberg, Baden, Alsace, and the alpine lands. The peasants’ greatest successes were the siege and capture of the city of Freiburg im Breisgau (May 18-23) and the battle at Schladming (July 3, 1525), which was the most important peasant military victory of the period of the Peasants War. However, even in these regions peasant actions were suppressed (for example, the rout of the Wurttemberg peasants on May 12 at Boblingen and the defeat of the peasants of Alsace at Zabern on May 16). The struggle lasted longest (until 1526) in the Austrian lands, especially the Tirol. M. Gaismair was an outstanding leader of the Tirolean peasants.
As a result of the defeat of the peasants in this armed rebellion, which was suppressed with extraordinary brutality, the feudal reaction and the power of the princes were strengthened, and the feudal fragmentation of Germany was reinforced. The history of the Peasant War demonstrated that the main force in the struggle against feudalism at the dawn of capitalist development consisted of the peasants and their allies, the urban plebeians.
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| A painting portraying a scene of the Peasants War of 1524-25. |
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