German Peasants' War

In 1524 and 1525 peasants, townspeople and some radical preachers rose in revolt across large parts of southern and central Germany, Alsace and the Austrian lands. The German Peasants' War was the largest popular uprising in Europe before the French Revolution of 1789. Poorly armed and without unified leadership, the rebels were crushed by the armies of the princes, and up to 100,000 of them are thought to have been killed.

The Holy Roman Empire was a patchwork of principalities, church lands and free cities, with the Emperor Charles V exercising little direct authority. In many areas lords had been tightening serfdom, raising rents and dues, and closing off common woods, pastures and fishing waters that villagers had once used freely. Historians still debate the balance of causes, but a study of hundreds of local lists of demands found that most attacked serfdom, restrictions on the commons and high rents. The religious upheaval of the Protestant Reformation, begun by Martin Luther in 1517, gave many rebels a language of Christian freedom and of justice based on scripture.

Trouble began during the 1524 harvest at Stühlingen, south of the Black Forest, where a countess's order that her serfs gather snail shells brought some 1,200 peasants together to elect officers and list their grievances. On 24 August Hans Müller of Bulgenbach formed an Evangelical Brotherhood there, and within weeks much of south-western Germany, from the Black Forest to Lake Constance and the upper Danube, was in revolt. In March 1525 delegates of three Upper Swabian peasant bands met at Memmingen, formed a Christian Association and adopted the Twelve Articles. These demanded the right of communities to choose their own pastors, the reform of tithes, the end of serfdom, the restoration of common rights, and limits on labour services, rents and arbitrary justice. Printed more than 25,000 times within two months, the articles circulated quickly throughout Germany as revolt spread to Franconia, Thuringia and Alsace.

The rebels organised themselves in large bands that elected their officers and debated decisions in a ring. Some won notable successes, but at Weinsberg in April 1525 a band led by Jakob Rohrbach killed the Count of Helfenstein and around seventy nobles by forcing them to run a gauntlet of pikes, an act that shocked many of the rebels' own leaders. The radical preacher Thomas Müntzer supported the peasants and saw the rising as an act of God. Luther, by contrast, at first criticised both lords and peasants, but in May 1525 published a tract urging the princes to put the rebels down without mercy.

Against the peasants stood the Swabian League, whose army under Georg, Truchsess von Waldburg, combined mercenary landsknechts, heavy cavalry and artillery. It defeated rebels at Leipheim in April and Böblingen in May, where the peasant losses alone were estimated at between 2,000 and 9,000, and at Königshofen in June. In Thuringia, the troops of Landgrave Philip of Hesse and Duke George of Saxony broke a truce and overwhelmed Müntzer's followers at Frankenhausen on 15 May 1525, killing perhaps 3,000 to 10,000; Müntzer was captured, tortured and executed. By September 1525 the fighting was over, although unrest flared briefly in parts of Switzerland.

The old order was restored, often in a harsher form, and survivors faced fines and punishments. Peasants were largely pushed out of political life, though in a few territories they gained places in regional assemblies. The deaths of so many labourers left some regions economically weakened for decades. Luther was criticised for his call to violence, both at the time and since, and a number of veterans later became leaders among the Anabaptists. In 1850 Friedrich Engels interpreted the war as an early class struggle, a reading later taken up by Marxist and other historians.

Our 1530 map shows the Holy Roman Empire shortly after the revolt; the uprising took place in what is now southern and central Germany, Austria and eastern France.