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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)
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By the autumn of 1524, peasant groups had rebelled or engaged in
various other forms of open resistance in the area around Nürnberg
and all around Lake Constance; already, the princes of southern
Germany begin their preparations for a military repression; but standing
armies were non-existant, and mercenaries were scarce; matters were not
helped by the deposed Count Ulrich of Württemberg, who was hoarding
mercenaries near Schaffhausen for a bid to take back his principality;
as a result, the princes were unable to intervene quickly, in 1524.
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Over the winter 1524-1525, rebellion spread into the Black Forest
and the Rhine Valley in the west; Hubmair was now joined by none
other than Thomas Müntzer, the former follower of Luther and a leading
figure on the radical side. Thus the rebellion spread, more or less unhindered.
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;
-
In April and early May 1525, the rebellion extended into
Württemberg,
and northern Switzerland (Thurgau, St. Gallen, Bern, Zurich, Basel);
in Alsace (now France) and the Rhine valley as far as the city of
Mainz;
parts of the Palatinate,
Lorraine, and Franche-Comté;
and finally into Thuringia; in the summer months of 1525, the rebellion
spread into western Saxony
and the Erzgebirge mountains;
now, too, the Habsburg lands
were engulfed: Tyrol, Salzburg,
Styria,
Upper
Austria; thus in the southern half of the German-speaking lands, only
Bavaria and the Forest Cantons remained untouched.
-
The rebellion, until now a German affair, spread to Italian-speaking areas
of South Tyrol, and flared among the French-speaking peoples of Lorraine,Montbéliard,
and Burgundy; In far East Prussia, rebellion flared too.
Nor, by the late spring and summer months, was it an exclusively rural
affair, as urban underclasses join their demands against city magistrates.
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)
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The Breisgau Band (in and around Freiburg)
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The Kaiserstuhl-Ortenau Band (to the north of Freiburg, as
far as Offenburg, across the Rhine from Strasbourg)
-
The Markgräfler Band (in the countryside behind Basel
to the north)
-
The Lake Band, or Seehaufen (based on the northern
shores of Lake Constance)
-
The Christian Union of the Black Forest (in the mountains
between St. Peter, St. Blasien, and Waldshut)
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The Christian Union of Upper Swabia (in the rich farmland
between Biberach, Memmingen, and Ravensburg)
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The Baltringen Army (near Biberach)
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The Leipheim Army (on the Danube between Swabia and Bavaria)
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The Allgäu Band (composed largely of serfs from the
Abbey of Kempten)
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The Tauber Valley Band (near Rothenburg ob der Tauber)
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The Odenwald Band (in the hills behind Heidelberg)
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The Württemberg Band (in and around Stuttgart)
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.
-
Under the leadership of Ulrich Schmid, the Baltringen headquarters
at the imperial city of Memmingen became a kind of capital city for the
uprising;
-
In early March, representatives of the three main Upper Swabian bands (Allgäu,
Lake, and Baltringen) united for the so-called “Memmingen Peasant Parliament,”
where they adopted the Twelve Articles written by Christoph Schappeler
and Sebastian Lotzer (a journeyman-furrier) and the Federal Ordinance;
-
Throughout March, the Twelve Articles spread throughout southern Germany;
meanwhile peasant representatives negotiated unsuccessfully with the Swabian
League to find a peaceful resolution to the crisis;
-
After talks broke off on 25 March, the princes went to war: the
7,000-soldier army of the Swabian League, headed by Georg Truchsess von
Waldburg, marched against the peasant bands as soon as the Ulm talks failed;
-
On 3-4 April, the League army attacked the Leipheim Army first,
near Ulm, beating it easily; then it moved against the Baltringen Army,
which also when its commanders learned that the Lake and Allgäu armies
would not come to its aid (13 April);
-
On 15 April, Waldburg met the 12,000-man Lake Band at Gaisbeuren
near Weingarten; fearing a defeat, Waldburg offered favorable peace terms
in return for dispersal (the Treaty of Weingarten, 17 April 1525),
terms the Lake Band accepted.
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:
-
Beginning with the arrival the Twelve Articles in mid-March, three
bands formed (Tauber, Odenwald, and Bilhausen); in the Tauber valley, the
rebellion merged with a revolt against the imperial city of Rothenburg
ob der Tauber, and from here it spread along the Main River to the bishoprics
of Würzburg and Bamberg.
-
Under the leadership of a serf named Jäcklein Rohrbach, the
Odenwald army (6,000) engaged the services of its own mercenaries and began
making radical demands for the abolition of feudal privileges belonging
to nobles and the clergy;
-
On 16 April 1525, the Odenwald army stormed the city of Heilbronn,
which succeeded Memmingen as the rebels’ “capital”; there, more representatives
gathered a another Peasant’s Parliament to consider a new constitution;
meanwhile rebel armies stormed Würzburg;
-
Soon, however, the army of the Swabian League was on the march in Franconia:
-
On 12 May 1525, the army of the Swabian League under Georg Truchsess
von Waldburg destroyed the Württemberg Band at the Battle ofBöblingen;
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.
-
Helpless before the rebel onslaught, the city fathers of Strasbourg sought
a negotiated peace;
-
But the rebellion here ended when Duke Antoine of Lorraine crushed a peasant
army at the Battle of Saverne, 17 May 1525, leaving some 18,000
peasants dead on the field.
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:
-
Tyrolean peasants had developed contacts to the Swabian rebels as early
as February 1525;
-
The rebellion flared in May, led by Michael Gaismair (a former Habsburg
official of peasant stock), and soon engulfed the entire province; Gaismair
would compose the most far-reaching statement of rebel objectives with
his “Territorial Constitution”
-
Although in Tyrol, too, the revolt was suppressed in the summer of 1525,
Gaismair survived until he was finally assassinated in 1530.
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