History 441/541
Sixteenth-Century
European Reformations

The Peasants’ War, 1524-1525: A Concise Overview

A. The Outbreak of Revolt
B. Expansion and Diversification
C. Confrontation and Defeat
1. Upper Swabia
2. Franconia
3. The Black Forest and Upper Rhine
4. Austria



A. The Outbreak of Revolt
For the outbreak of what became known as the “Peasants’ War”, historians usually point to an uprising in June, 1524, on the estates of the count of Lupfen near Stühlingen, hard by the Swiss frontier at Schaffhausen. What started as a labor strike, essentially, quickly escalated into a full-blown rebellion under the leadership of one Hans Müller of Bulgenbach and later the radical reformer, Balthasar Hubmair, living in Waldshut (a Rhine town near the Swiss border)
B. Expansion and Diversification
The main phase of the rebellion, in which it reached its full geographical extent and came closest to achieving its revolutionary potential, was between February and May 1525. From its earliest centers along the Upper Rhine and Lake Constance, the revolt spread in February to Upper Swabia, the Danube headwaters, south to the Alps and east to the Bavarian frontier. In March and early April, rebellion flared in Franconia in central Germany and north of the Danube;
  Thus in February and March, 1525, the peasants proved capable of organizing politically ambitious and militarily quite effective regional “Bands” (or Haufen, as they were known at the time) The proliferation of the Twelve Articles to nearly all of these band as well as their whole or partial adoption reflects the considerable degree of communication that was possible, even among sixteenth century peasants; unlike the princes, however, these Bands were unable to communicate with each other effectively enough to coordinate a common strategy, let alone a common vision of objectives beyond the rather modest list of grievances contained in the Twelve Articles. As a result, the princes were able (once they had recovered from their initial shock) to destroy the bands piecemeal, one by one.

C. Confrontation and Defeat

1. Upper Swabia
The southwest—that jigsaw puzzle landscape of political fragmentation—was the original theater of rebellion. By March, the Allgäu, Baltringen, Lake, and Black Forest Bands had already formed; the largest of these was the Baltringen army, with perhaps as many as 10,000 men under arms. Thus the greatest of the peasant associations was defeated; but no sooner had the Swabian bands given up than new bands began military operations in Franconia, the Black Forest, and along the Upper Rhine.

2. Franconia
Here too, the political landscape was extremely fragmented, which aided the peasants initially but also encumbered their ability to cooperate above and beyond the regional level:

Soon after, the Franconian “Parliament” disbanded and Waldburg captured Jäcklein Rohrbach, whom he had roasted to death; with the recapture of Würzburg on 8 June, the Franconian revolt was over. In nearby Thuringia, meanwhile, forces under Landgrave Philip of Hesse crushed the rebellion at the decisive Battle of Frankenhausen (15 May 1525), in which 6,000 peasants were killed.

3. The Black Forest and Upper Rhine
In this region near the original epicenter of rebellion, Hans Müller of Bulgenbach organized a 12,000-man army of Black Forest peasants in May, with whom he besieged the provincial capital of Freiburg; meanwhile, on the opposite bank of the Rhine, the peasants of Alsace rebelled and captured numerous cities, notably Wissembourg and Saverne.

4. Austria
In the Habsburg lands, the rebellion was led initially by miners living under the rule of the Archbishop of Salzburg and who were already influenced by Lutheran teachings; from Salzburg the revolt spread into Styria (where a rebel army actually defeated an Austrian force at the Battle of Schlamding, 2 June 1525);
The longest and ultimately the most radical holdout of the rebellion was Tyrol, in the Austrian Alps:
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