German Peasants' War

Background

In the early sixteenth century, peasants in the Holy Roman Empire bore multiple burdens at once. They owed their lords unpaid labor (corvée) and various dues, and they paid the tithe to the church. Many peasants were serfs, bound to the land and restricted even in their freedom to move and marry. Peasant uprisings such as the Bundschuh movement had already occurred before this period.

As the Reformation spread after 1517, the conviction grew among peasants that "oppression without a basis in Scripture is unjust." Some peasants and preachers took the freedom of faith that Martin Luther had emphasized in On the Freedom of a Christian (1520) as grounds for changing the social order. Preachers associated with the Radical Reformation, such as Thomas Müntzer, who had broken with Luther, supported the uprising and offered theological justification for it.

Course of Events

• Summer 1524: The uprising began at Stühlingen in southwestern Germany. It then spread to southern and southeastern Germany and extended as far as Austria, Tyrol, Alsace, and the Lower Rhine region.
• February–March 1525: Representatives of the peasant bands of Upper Swabia gathered in Memmingen, formed the "Christian Union," and adopted the so-called Twelve Articles. The document is generally said to have been drafted by Sebastian Lotzer, a lay preacher and journeyman furrier, with a preface by Christoph Schappeler, a preacher in Memmingen. Its principal demands were the right of the congregation to choose its own pastor, reform of the tithe, abolition of serfdom, restoration of hunting and fishing rights, reduction of feudal burdens, and judicial reform. Within a few weeks the document was printed more than twenty-five times and circulated throughout the areas in revolt.
• April 1525: Luther responded to the Twelve Articles with his Admonition to Peace. In it he urged the peasants not to resort to force and counseled the princes and nobles to come to terms with the peasants. The uprising nevertheless spread further into central Germany, including Franconia and Thuringia.
• May 1525: Luther wrote Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants, urging the princes to suppress the revolt swiftly and forcefully. That same month, at Frankenhausen in Thuringia, an allied princely army led by Landgrave Philip I of Hesse and others defeated the peasant army led by Müntzer. Müntzer was captured, tortured, and executed on May 27. In the south, the army of the Swabian League, an alliance of princes and cities, put down the peasant forces one after another.

Results and Impact

About 300,000 people are reported to have taken part in the uprising, of whom roughly 100,000 lost their lives. Fines were imposed on the survivors, and few of the goals the peasants had proclaimed were achieved. The uprising is regarded as the largest and most widespread popular revolt in Europe before the French Revolution of 1789.

After the suppression ended, Luther was criticized for his harsh writings. He wrote an open letter defending his position, while also stating that the nobles' suppression had been excessively cruel.

Assessment

• Luther's stance: Luther's initial sympathy for the peasants' plight, followed soon after by his support for forceful suppression, remains controversial to this day. Critics hold that Luther sided with the princes and incited a massacre. Those more sympathetic to Luther explain that his primary aim was to prevent even greater bloodshed and that he opposed the use of the gospel as a pretext for armed rebellion.
• Assessment of Müntzer: Views of Müntzer are divided between those who see him as a "revolutionary theologian" who stood with the poor peasants and those who see him as a figure who incited violence out of apocalyptic conviction.
• Historiographical interpretation: Scholarship since the 1970s has emphasized the multiple, intertwined causes of the event and frequently interprets the uprising as an early social revolution. Some scholars regard the Twelve Articles as the first draft of human rights and civil liberties produced on the European continent since the Roman Empire.