Something a bit different for Friday, "In the summer of 1524 near the Black Forest in what is today Stühlingen, Baden-Wurttemberg in southern Germany, one of the largest and most significant popular uprisings of recorded history in the middle and renaissance ages began. A quibble between peasants and the ruling countess in the province of Swabia led to a greater revolt of a loosely confederated Serf/Peasant alliance that became the catalyst for great conflict, upheaval, and civil war in the early Renaissance age in the central European Germanic kingdoms associated with the Swabian League. The league was lead by Emperor Charles V; locked in continuous series of campaigns with the Italians throughout his reign from 1519-1556. The king appointed his brother and successor, Archduke Ferdinand of Austria (sharing the same name of his late ancestor, who’s assassination sparked the Great War in 1914) to crush the rebellion in mostly the south & southwest of Swabian League territory. The Peasants Rebellion eventually ignited a near national revolution with hundreds of thousands fighting for the rights of religious and social liberty in Southwestern Germany. For the Swabian League forces it was a war to defend property, the greater social order & culture, and also a secondary rebellion, between disaffected lower nobles and knights, many of whom were or who were at one time employed as landsknecht mercenaries, professional, well armed and trained soldiers from within and outside Austro-German provinces. Rather ironically the title of the Peasants War or Peasants Rebellion is somewhat misleading because many of the enemy rebel forces were laborers, artisans, or lower gentry. Many of the fighting men on both were outlaw knights, mercenaries and former soldiers from Switzerland and the other German kingdoms. The infrequent regional or national makeup of the rebels was most evident especially in the ever-lacking leadership of the Peasants movement itself. One of the early participants in the rebellion which opened up the conflict into a larger war was the disinherited Duke Ulrich of Württemberg, fighting with the help of peasant levies and with distraction of the Swabian League reeling from peasant risings throughout the kingdom. Many of these men certainly had no affiliation with the Peasants movement and though they tolerated, though most certainly disagreed and personally despised those of lower social class. Of the most important leaders was a man essentially thrust into a military role without any previous experience, the radical theologian and reformer Thomas Müntzer (b.1488-1525). Many of the peasant bands small or large (most numbering from around 300-500 to as large as 5,000-<10,000) were indeed led and commanded by men with little or no military experience, who were elected or assumed command because the men under them thought they were best suited, a radical idea. However some bands did receive the services of less than savory types such as ruthless mercenaries, free lancer landsknechts who fought for payment and plunder, also former robber knights who had taken to the cause for personal or culutural reasons. One knight of noble birth and status who surprisingly threw his lot in with the Peasants was Sir Gottfried, Götz von Berlichingen (b.1480- 1562), a knight known alternatively as Götz of the Iron Hand, because he wore a prosthetic iron gauntlet after loosing his sword hand in the year 1504 at the Siege of Landshu whilst in the service of the Bavarian Duke Albert IV. Ironically he too had helped crush the earlier Peasants Rebellion of the Poor Conrad band, the truth being that the Peasants rebellion was fought by many men who were not indeed peasants at all. This greater period from dating back as far as the 1480’s during the tail end of England’s Wars of the Roses 1400-1499. In the same time-frame many of the German states can were rife with similar princely wars, upheavals, and civil conflicts. However the influence of the peasantry and the oppressed serf classes on the overall conflict cannot be overlooked, as highlighted by the many 1930's-1980’s contemporary, and more recent histories & narratives, from Frederick Engels 1850, The Peasant War in Germany, to modern socio-religious and military studies of the conflict, which examine the conflict through alternative viewpoints. Engel’s originals study has since become a classic in revolutionary or Marxist historical revisionism, alongside perhaps similar comparative studies of the English Civil War, like historian Christopher Hill’s (b.1912-2003) The English Revolution 1640 (1940, Lawrence & Wishart)." http://warfarehistorian.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/german-peasants-war-1524-1526-swabian.html And also- http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/map.cfm?map_id=3667 http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Peasants_War.aspx
Gordon, I barely remember that one, was just a tike ! Seriously, I really enjoy your historic post, my first degree was in European History, strange offering for the University of Alabama, but my interest never lagged. Gaines
..ahum..dutch-spanish 80 years war ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighty_Years%27_War Few of the same ingredients: aristocrats vs civilians...Catholics vs protestants/reformists...and a long, long war (80 years beats 2 years) with lots of disrespectful hateful bloodshed... why is it that wikipedia allows these "the best, or one of the most..." subjective annotations ?
Suppose the main difference was the Dutch had a centralised leadership, whereas the German peasants never really did,
The 80 Years war was also a nationalist Flemish/Nederlandisch Protestant uprising against imperial catholic spain. The NAZIS drew on the myths and heritage of the Peasants war. They were not merely a Nationalist right wing political movement , but also one which claimed to champion the working class. Some SS formations were names after German heroes including two rebel leaders were from the Peasants war. Some SS men contesting the Normandy Bocage did so as part of the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division. "Götz von Berlichingen." The term is also a euphemism for what the French might call a Mot Cambronne! Another was Florien Geyer, whose name was given to an SS Cavalry Division. The Florien Geyer Song was quite a well known https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jrk1ke6zIqY&list=PL9E29112452AF889E&index=1. The second verse has a very similar phrase to the rallying call of John Ball's Lollards in the Peasant's Revolt of 1381."When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?" The same song is sung as a Union song in Australia. http://unionsong.com/u079.html#top (This link may not work. Google florien geyer and pick the Union song Neither would have been acceptable heroes in the Kaisers Germany or Franz Joseph's KuK land
