The German Peasants' War: Europe's Largest Revolt Before the French Revolution
The German Peasants' War was a massive uprising from 1524 to 1525 involving 300,000 rebels across Central Europe. Despite their numbers, the poorly armed peasants were crushed by aristocratic forces, resulting in over 100,000 deaths. The conflict intertwined with the Protestant Reformation, featuring radical support from Thomas Müntzer but facing brutal condemnation from Martin Luther, who urged nobles to kill the rebels like mad dogs.
The peasants must be sliced, choked, stabbed, secretly and publicly, by those who can, like one must kill a rabid dog.
- hliyan
Not a historian nor economist, but to my layman's mind, these revolts seem like a recurring phenomenon whenever long running economic cycles reach that point at which the aristocracy overreaches while trying to suppressing growing public sentiment against them, not unlike in Polybius' anacyclosis. But unlike Polybius' cycles, as technology improves, the likelihood of a successful reset at the end of a cycle, gradually diminishes with each cycle. I've recently started on Piketty's Capital, and he too alludes to the possibility that the post-industrial-revolution spiral into inequality could have continued uninterrupted into the 20th century and beyond, had it not been for the socioeconomic shock of the world war. Looking at the current trajectory of automation of intellectual labour and surveillance technology, I too am starting to worry that the odds of breaking the current cycle are slim.
- constantius
An episode of history I had never heard about. 100-300,000 peasants killed.
As someone who reads a lot about the early history of religion, the most interesting part of this for me was the role of Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism: "In Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants, Luther condemned the violence as the devil's work and called for the aristocrats to put down the rebels like mad dogs". My study of history of Christianity had left Protestantism relatively unscathed up to now. Well, no longer.
- dr_dshiv
“ After defeating the peasants and their town allies in 1525, the lords continued raising rents to the point that, by the 1570s, peasants were paying 60 to 80 percent of their harvest on rents and debt. This unsustainable amount meant that the farmers could not adequately feed themselves or their livestock, nor refertilize the soil. This led to declining grain yields, widespread malnutrition, and famines, which opened the door to the return of the plague. Social tensions grew at all levels of society, producing witch hunts and repeated outbreaks of war. The growing burden of war taxes and staggering debt loads further crippled the economy, ending in general collapse into the Thirty Years War. The Thirty Years War was the inescapable result of the defeat of the peasants in 1525. Farmers in England, meanwhile, won their freedom from serfdom, which allowed them to produce the growing agricultural surpluses that fueled England’s rise to world power.”
Proving again that a harmony of interests is better than domination.
- alexwwang
The peasants’ war happened over and over again in Chinese history among the gaps of dynasties. That’s a result of autocracy.
- wolfi1
Thomas Müntzer is one of the unsung heroes of this revolt, unfortunately very little is left of him, most biographies take about 100 pages or less