PEASANTS' WAR, THE.
I. Virtual Serfdom of the Peasants. II. Growth of the Movement.
The Urban Lower Classes Join the Peasants (§ 1). Western Germany and the Heilbronn Plan (§ 2). In Thuringia and Saxony; Miinzer (§ 3).
III. Luther and the Peasants' War.
IV. Open Hostilities and Repression. V. Result of the Insurrection.
I. Virtual Serfdom of the Peasants: The Peasants' War was the armed rising of the peasants of central and southern Germany in the year 1525. It was the violent and awful final catastrophe of a social process starting from the social and legal system of the Middle Ages and continuing for centuries. The view that the greatest of all popular risings in German history was brought about by the Reformation is not supported by the facts. Long before the actual beginning of the religious movement, it had been firmly fixed in the peasant's mind that the original condition of their race had been one of universal personal freedom, which had been forcibly and unjustly replaced by serfdom or villeinage. The demands of the peasants were therefore not impelled by a false conception of the Evangelical liberty proclaimed by the Reformers,
RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Pearson, John Peasants' War
but by a deeply rooted consciousness of their rights. The oppressed peasants saw in the powerful superiors who had taken away their freedom, and in the law which they hated as foreign, no hope of improvement or of justice; but only if the Scriptures, which were read more eagerly after Luther had turned them into the vernacular, were accepted as the inspiration and counsel of reform.
The development of the feudal system and the weakening of the royal power had almost destroyed the old free peasantry. At the end of the fifteenth century the old communal rights, the symbols of freedom, were enjoyed nowhere but in the Tyrol and in Friesland. The peasants had been forced almost everywhere to surrender them as a consequence of the vicious legal relations which drove the poorer to seek protection by giving themselves over to powerful temporal or spiritual lords, and burdening their land by the obligations of all kinds of services and rents. The lines about the peasant were drawn closer and closer, until he was finally bound inseparably to the clod which he cultivated. If the peasant could not free himself by any payment from the obligations accepted by him or gradually imposed on him, he must stay where he was, because his lord had a right to his labor and the produce of his fields — this is what characterized his lot as that of serfdom. The pressure of the system, especially in those parts of Germany where petty lords held sway, had become almost unbearable. Besides the payments in money or kind, the most various compulsory services were exacted, which were often increased to an intolerable degree. If a peasant resisted, he rendered himself liable to a heavy penalty, exacted by his lord without pity or reason, unless there happened to be some concurrent governmental authority in the district. But in many cases the government and the land were in the same hands; and the whole legal system of Germany was in great disorder. The peasant had lost confidence in processes of law. The transition from the primitive system of barter to a monetary one had also done him more harm than good. If the peasant needed money, he had to pay the most exorbitant interest (thirty, forty, or more per cent.), while several features of the system, especially the encroaching monopolies of the commercial gilds, prevented him from disposing of his produce at remunerative rates. The peasant suffered more than any one else from the increasing evils of private warfare which in the fifteenth century prevailed to an unlimited degree; his house and barn were liable to be destroyed and his fields trampled under foot. The other classes, especially the nobles, came to regard the peasant as a degraded being against whom anything was lawful. This mutual hatred between classes destroyed all possibility of understanding or sympathy. The numerous local risings in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries proved the seriousness of the conditions, but gave no hope for the future. When the different rulers defeated the attempts of the poorer classes to regain their ancient rights and to throw off the increasing burdens, they did nothing to disperse the cloud which, in the social situation, hung over the country. On the contrary, discontent and bitterness only in- VIIL— 28
creased, and with them the feeling that a great catastrophe was impending, as predicted by astrologers and other prophets. Things were in this state when the religious reformation took the center of public affairs; after a few years, however, the social question claimed attention all the more insistently. II. Growth of the Movement: The great Peasants' War of 1524-26 is historically important mainly from the fact that it was not alone the rural population that took part in it, but that the lower
classes in the towns were in opposition
i. The Urban to the existing social order, and felt
Lower themselves drawn close to the peasants
Classes join by the desire to reshape things in the
the Peasants, same spirit. Now for the first time
there was a distinct effort to organize the entire peasantry of Germany, and the feeling of unity was expressed in a more or less generally accepted program. The most powerful and in a certain sense the most enlightened of the peasant organizations was that of Swabia in the southwest, formed by the union of three smaller bodies. The members of these started the movement, proposed plans of federation, and formulated their demands in a deliberative assembly, the so-called Peasants' Parliament of Memmingen. The clear and consistent program put forth by them was the basis of negotiations with the nobles united in the Swabian League, the failure of which is to be ascribed to the anti-popular activity of the crafty and influential Bavarian chancellor, Leonhard von Eck. The program, probably drawn up by Sebastian Lotzer, a furrier of Memmingen, under the influence of the preacher Schappeler, is based on the Gospel as the book of truth and justice; it upholds the communal principle, and contents itself with the formulation of agrarian demands, not touching other questions much discussed at the time. Its twelve articles, moderate and yet powerful in expression, contained the main things which oppressed the whole peasantry, and thus found general approval. If there had been a strong central government in Germany, some agreement might possibly have been reached with them for a basis. It was to that and not to violence that the Swabian peasants looked in the first instance. Their intentions were sincere; and on the other side, in the Swabian League, men were not wanting who would have been glad to avert bloodshed. But the actual leader of the latter refused to hear of a peaceful solution, preferring to try and stamp out once for all, in the peasant movement, the spirit of progress. The pretended negotiations with the peasants were carried on only to gain time for the assembly and preparation of the League's forces, and to dispose of a threatened alliance between Duke Ulrich of Wiirttemberg and the peasants. The commander of the League's army, Georg Truchsess von Waldburg, felt so little assured of success that he neglected no means, not even that of treachery, for winning it. On the success of the first attack in southern Swabia depended the outcome of the whole movement. If, as Truchsess feared, the peasant societies, deceived by the League, had taken the field en masse in April, 1525, and won a victory, the peasantry of all Germany would have risen to join
Peasants' War Pecock