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German Peasants' War Timeline
Let's first take a look at a timeline of the major events of the German Peasants' War.
Date | Event |
August 1524 | Peasants began to revolt at Stühlingen. Hans Müller became their leader. |
December 1524 | Thomas Müntzer travelled to Grießen and joining the peasants' cause. |
February 1525 | The rebellions spread from Lake Konstanz to the West (Upper Swabia), East (Bavarian border), and South (The Alps). |
March 1525 | Peasants overthrew the government at Mülhausen and established the Eternal Council.The Twelve Articles were published.Martin Luther published AnAdmonition to Peace. |
April 1525 | Rebellions spread North to central Germany (Franconia).15 April – Georg III, Truchsess von Waldburg led 7,000 Swabian soldiers against 12,000 Lake Band peasants. 17 April – Treaty of Weingarten was created to disperse the peasants without bloodshed. |
May 1525 | Martin Luther published Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants.12 May – Battle of Böblingen. 3,000 peasants killed.15 May – Battle of Frankenhausen. 6,000 peasants killed. Thomas Müntzer was captured and tortured.17 May – Battle of Saverne. 18,000 peasants killed. 27 May – Thomas Müntzer was executed. |
July 1525 | Martin Luther published An Open Letter on the Harsh Book Against the Peasants. |
September 1525 | Hostilities ended and peasantry was suppressed. Some 100,000 peasants died in the conflicts, and many more from starvation as their crops were destroyed. |
Causes of the German Peasants' War
The German Peasants' War was caused by both a long-term discontent and oppression by the state and the Church and the immediate events of the Protestant Reformation. Let's look at these causes.
Long-Term Causes
Two significant long-term causes were Christian Humanism and and the class system of medieval Germany.
The Rise in Christian Humanism
The Renaissance (14-17th century) saw a societal “rebirth” in Europe after the Middle Ages, and it was during this time that Greek and Latin texts were “rediscovered” and studied. This led to a rise in Christian Humanistic thought with the writings of Desiderius Erasmus. Erasmus equated the humanist message of morality and community with the Christian faith and claimed that society must rise above its carnal state through education and piety to achieve godliness.
Erasmus' writings had created a culture of Christian humanism which was sympathetic to peasants who were oppressed at the time, and appealed to religious reformers who wanted to challenge the Catholic Church's practices. The consideration of the peasantry helped to spur the revolutionary ideas that began the German Peasants' War.
Class System
During the 15th century, the Holy Roman Empire was still very much a feudal society, where citizens' lives were dictated by their class and status. As society developed, the local ruling princes had further costs to deal with and so used their powers to raise taxes. They also consolidated their power over the lesser nobility, or knights, to secure their position. The knights responded by further exploiting their subjects, the peasantry, which were subjected to serfdom.
Peasants were at the very bottom of the pile, taxed heavily by the princes and knights, alongside the 10% tithing tax instated by the Catholic Church. The clergy in each principality also held significant power as the intellectual and religious authority of the area, and took payments for indulgences and introduced further taxation to peasants. Furthermore, many peasants had to pay taxes to hunt or fish in the princes' territories, which they had previously had free access to. This generated the discontent that led to the revolts.
Short-Term Causes
The catalyst for the German Peasants' War was the Protestant Reformation.
Protestant Reformation
Luther's proposals for reform in 1517 started a religious movement throughout the Holy Roman Empire to challenge the Catholic Church and inspired other more radical reformers to further his message. These radical reformers used Christian Humanism to further challenge the political and social environment of the Holy Roman Empire regarding the peasantry.
Peasants were inspired by the Reformation to change the social hierarchy, and thus began to stage revolts within their principalities. Some radical reformers, such as Huldrych Zwingli and Thomas Müntzer, supported the peasants, and Müntzer in particular took an active role in rallying peasants to the cause.
The Knights' Revolt (1522-23)
A contested cause for the German Peasants' War was the Knights' Revolt in 1522. Upon Martin Luther's reforms, several Imperial Knights supported him and saw the opportunity to regain their declining status in their territories. As princes had increased their power, the knights had suffered through loss of land and the taxation imposed by princes and the Church.
In 1522, one knight, Franz von Sickingen, rallied together some other imperial knights against the Archbishop of Trier, Richard Greiffenklau, using religious scripture to justify the revolt with the aim of raising knights' status. Sickingen had attempted to evoke a revolt in the peasants of Trier, piggybacking off the fervour of the Reformation, to achieve his aims. In defeat, Sickingen retreat to his castle, which was besieged in 1523 and resulted in his death the same year.
The peasants did not support him as they were exploited by the knights anyway, and after a week the revolt failed. The insurgency did, however, prove the unrest in the Holy Roman Empire and the knights' refusal to pay the Church's tithes inspired peasants to do the same during their revolt in the following year.
German Peasant War Leaders
Let's take a look at the different leaders involved in the German Peasants War.
The Peasants
The peasant revolts initially occurred spontaneously throughout the South and West of Germany, beginning in Stühlingen in 1524 after peasants refused their duties. Other areas started refusing to pay the Church's tithes, and a peasant leader eventually came forth: Hans Müller.
Müller gathered peasants together into an “evangelical brotherhood” to fight for the cause, and sent pamphlets to the German principalities to gain further support. He attracted attention from some discontented nobles throughout South Germany, such as Florian Geyer and Wendel Hipler, who supported the peasants. Radical reformer Thomas Müntzer saw in the peasants' revolt an opportunity to spread his ideas of religious and social upheaval, and offered advice to the peasant leaders.
Despite the support granted by these figures, the peasant armies were sizeable but vastly unequipped and untrained as they faced the Swabian League's army.
The Swabian League
The Holy Roman Empire created the Swabian League in 1488 to defend the interests of the Empire and maintain peace; it was based in the region of Swabia, in Southwest Germany. At the advent of the German Peasants' War, the Swabian League was called to quell the revolt.
The key figure of the Swabian League during the German Peasants' War was the Catholic Georg III, Truchsess von Waldburg who was nicknamed Bauernjörg (“Farmer Georg”) and “The Scourge of the Peasants”. He became known for his brutal defeats of the peasant armies throughout the war.
Philip I of Hesse was also a prince of the Swabian League, but had converted to Lutheranism. Despite this, he did not support the peasants' demands for social reform. Although he supported Luther's proposed religious reform, he regarded the peasantry as too radical in comparison.
German Peasants' War 1524
The German Peasants' War raged across Germany as various groups arose in their principalities. The peasant armies were untrained, but still gained momentum with the prospect of enacting change. The war moved north from Stühlingen to Mühlhausen, which became the centre of peasant activity. In March 1525, peasants overthrew the governing council and established the “eternal council” with the peasants' interests at heart.
The Twelve Articles were formulated in Memmingen and published in March 1525. They stated the peasants' religious and secular demands, such as the ability to choose their pastors, reduce taxes, abolish serfdom, and the restoration of rights to fish and hunt on lands now controlled by princes. Using printing presses, the peasants distributed their demands and created a better, united philosophy among their ranks.
After the Twelve Articles were distributed, the peasantry formed military bands to fight the Swabian League.
Did you know? In most of the battles, the Swabian Army defeated the peasant forces with ease due to their military training and organisation. An example of this is the Battle of Böblingen, where 3,000 peasants died compared to only 40 of the Swabian Army.
German Peasants' War and Martin Luther
Martin Luther became a key external figure to the conflicts. He initially published his Admonition to Peace in response to the Twelve Articles in March 1525, which sympathised with the peasants' issues but pleaded that they be resolved peacefully.
After the wars began to rage following the Twelve Articles, Luther published another document: Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants, in May 1525. In this contrasting text, Luther condemned the peasants' actions in the wars and called for the Swabian League to put down the revolts violently.
In the aftermath of the War, some peasants named Luther a traitor, as his publication had encouraged the princes to use excessive violence to quell the revolts. Luther published An Open Letter on the Harsh Book Against the Peasants in July 1525 to justify his words. However, he backtracked slightly by also condemning the extent of violence used by the princes to put down the rebellion.
Why was the Protestant message so appealing to the peasantry?
In many ways, the peasantry took Luther's message to its logical conclusion. By arguing against the hierarchy of the pope and priests above common people, Luther argued for an equality of all believers. This message of equality in the eyes of God had radical implications - for example, that men were equal in the physical world too. The peasants' war took Luther's message of equality in the spiritual realm and applied it to the socio-economic realm too.
In many ways, Luther was unable to keep up with the full implications that his Protestant message had unleashed. His push back against the peasants in May 1525 demonstrates his struggle to keep the Protestant message strictly within the spiritual sphere.
German Peasants' War Effects
The German Peasants' War did little to enact the change that the peasantry was hoping for. Luther's denouncement of the peasants was used as an excuse by rulers to maintain the restrictions to the peasantry. After the War, peasants were left in an even worse situation as further exploitation and oppression was used in retaliation to the revolt.
The War also damaged the progress of the Protestant Reformation, as religious reform was one of the demands of the peasantry so rulers were harsher to other proposed reforms to the Catholic Church. Luther criticised Thomas Müntzer as an example of taking the Reformation “too far” and confirmed his position as solely a religious reformer rather than wanting to disrupt the political and social environment of the Holy Roman Empire.
German Peasants' War Historiography
The most interesting historiographical stance to the German Peasants' War came in the late 19th century, when Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels venerated the rebellion as an early example of a class struggle between peasants and their oppressors.
In Germany following the War, the peasants, Müntzer and their other supporters were often seen as inciting violence and an unfortunate, radical episode during the Protestant Reformation. When Marx and Engels called the struggle an early form of Communist struggle, the Peasants War gained popularity within socialist circles.
When Germany was split between capitalists and communist during the Cold War, the German Peasants' War was officially memorialised with an East German commission of a panorama painting of the 1525 conflict by Werner Tübke in 1987. This demonstrated the importance of the War within Communist ideology, and showed a different interpretation to the common historical view of downplaying the significance of the War for the Protestant Reformation.
The alternative take on the German Peasants' War opens the possibility of how the Protestant Reformation could have led to complete societal upheaval and better treatment of the peasantry, rather than simply the creation of Protestantism. The German Peasants' War is now classified by historians as part of the 'radical Reformation' - the less mainstream, more transformative, elements of the Reformation that sought to push Luther's message to its full implications.
German Peasants War - Key takeaways
- The German Peasants' War was caused by the long-term factors of the rise of Christian Humanism and the poor treatment of peasants within the Holy Roman Empire's class system. In the short term, the Protestant Reformation and the Knight's Revolt can be seen as the touch paper to start the rebellions.
- Hans Müller primarily led the Peasants, but others were also involved, as many peasant bands formed throughout Germany. Thomas Müntzer took an active role in the War as it aligned with his beliefs of religious and societal change to the Holy Roman Empire.
- The Swabian League defended the rulers of Germany's territories during the War. The Swabian Army slaughtered the untrained and poorly equipped peasant armies.
- Peasants published the Twelve Articles in March 1525 to express their demands. Luther responded with Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants (May 1525). Luther was branded a traitor to the peasants for inciting the princes to violently quell the rebellions.
- The peasantry gained next to nothing from the rebellion. Around 100,000 peasants died in the conflicts.
- The German Peasants' War was largely forgotten by history as an unfortunate setback to the Protestant Reformation. Marx and Engels venerated the War as a fight for social equality and a class war, which renewed historical interest in the conflict.
References
- Fig. 4 Flag of the Holy Roman Empire (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag-Holy-Roman-Empire.png) by N3MO (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:N3MO) modified by Paul2 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Paul2) licensed by CC BY SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en)
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Frequently Asked Questions about German Peasants War
What caused the German peasants' war?
There were several long- and short-term causes for the War. The Renaissance had brought a rise in Christian Humanism led by Desiderius Erasmus to question the treatment of society under Christianity. The class system of the Holy Roman Empire also severely oppressed and exploited the peasantry, leading to growing discontent.
The advent of the Protestant Reformation (1517) and the Knights' Revolt (1522-3) were the short-term events that helped to inspire the German Peasants' War.
What was the impact of the German Peasant War?
For the peasantry, their situation did not improve after the German Peasants' War. As a result of their revolt and Martin Luther's condemnation of the War, peasants were treated more harshly in retaliation. Nearly 100,000 peasants died in the War and many more died from starvation due to the destruction of their crops.
The War also damaged the progress of the Protestant Reformation as further challenges to the status quo were treated harshly by the ruling classes.
Who won the German peasants' war?
The Swabian League, which fought on behalf of the Holy Roman Empire, defeated the peasant armies easily during the German Peasants' War, leading to 100,000 peasant casualties.
What ended the German peasants' war?
As the peasant armies fought throughout Germany as a loosely organised force, several battles took place throughout the war. Martin Luther's condemnation of the peasants in Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants, published in May 1525, incited the Swabian League to use excessive force in these battles to decimate the peasant forces throughout May 1525. Conflicts still arose until September 1525, when the War officially ended, but the key battles were the Battle of Frankenhausen on 15 May 1525 (when Thomas Müntzer was captured) and the Battle of Saverne on 17 May 1525 (when 18,000 peasants were killed).
Why did the German Peasant War fail?
The peasant armies were uncoordinated, untrained, and ill-equipped. They served as no match to the Swabian League's army. To further weaken their case, Martin Luther criticised the German Peasants War in Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants, published in May 1525, which led to harsher treatment by the princes.
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