German Peasants' War

Not a historian nor economist, but to my layman's mind, these revolts seem like a recurring phenomenon whenever long running economic cycles reach that point at which the aristocracy overreaches while trying to suppressing growing public sentiment against them, not unlike in Polybius' anacyclosis. But unlike Polybius' cycles, as technology improves, the likelihood of a successful reset at the end of a cycle, gradually diminishes with each cycle. I've recently started on Piketty's Capital, and he too alludes to the possibility that the post-industrial-revolution spiral into inequality could have continued uninterrupted into the 20th century and beyond, had it not been for the socioeconomic shock of the world war. Looking at the current trajectory of automation of intellectual labour and surveillance technology, I too am starting to worry that the odds of breaking the current cycle are slim.

“ After defeating the peasants and their town allies in 1525, the lords continued raising rents to the point that, by the 1570s, peasants were paying 60 to 80 percent of their harvest on rents and debt. This unsustainable amount meant that the farmers could not adequately feed themselves or their livestock, nor refertilize the soil. This led to declining grain yields, widespread malnutrition, and famines, which opened the door to the return of the plague. Social tensions grew at all levels of society, producing witch hunts and repeated outbreaks of war. The growing burden of war taxes and staggering debt loads further crippled the economy, ending in general collapse into the Thirty Years War. The Thirty Years War was the inescapable result of the defeat of the peasants in 1525. Farmers in England, meanwhile, won their freedom from serfdom, which allowed them to produce the growing agricultural surpluses that fueled England’s rise to world power.”

Proving again that a harmony of interests is better than domination.

An episode of history I had never heard about. 100-300,000 peasants killed.

As someone who reads a lot about the early history of religion, the most interesting part of this for me was the role of Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism: "In Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants, Luther condemned the violence as the devil's work and called for the aristocrats to put down the rebels like mad dogs". My study of history of Christianity had left Protestantism relatively unscathed up to now. Well, no longer.

The peasants’ war happened over and over again in Chinese history among the gaps of dynasties. That’s a result of autocracy.

Thomas Müntzer is one of the unsung heroes of this revolt, unfortunately very little is left of him, most biographies take about 100 pages or less

If anyone’s interested about this period of time (and the Anabaptist revolution) a great novel: Q by Luther Blisset

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_(novel)

Curtis Yarvin in a New York Times interview said that there were no wars under monarchy in Europe. Imagine that.

Pentiment is a Peabody award winning video game that covers this period. It's terribly engaging and well written. I'd use the word "educational" but that might make it sound dry, which it is not.

This was not about religion but about constitution. Basically they were influenced more by the Magna Carta than by reformation. Anyway, nice to see people interested in how rights were aspired, lost and revived.

I know everything is told from a perspective, but I find the Marxist “aristocrat / bourgeois” lens rather tired and severely anachronistic. This is told as if Luther and the Magisterial Reformers were just “siding with the aristocracy” and didn’t have any other reasons for opposing a violent uprising on anarchy. The Reformers were trying to effect spiritual and theological change. But when the magistrate, who was supporting the Reformation, encountered radicals who used those ideas for violence and their own ambition, the Reformers had a conundrum. Carl Truman writes in his book “Luther in the Christian Life” (Crossway, 2015), ‘This latter concept, often known as “the priesthood of all believers” or “the general priesthood of all believers” was explosive in Luther’s day because it struck at the very structure of medieval piety. … The problem became acutely significant for the Reformers, and especially Luther, in 1525, with the Peasants’ War. At that time, radicals used Luther’s language of freedom as part of the rhetoric of rebellion, for understandable reasons. Such language resonates powerfully with the oppressed and disenfranchised in every age. The problem, of course, was that Luther was using such words in a manner that assumed their refraction through the cross. The same applied to the language of universal priesthood: the obvious democratizing tendency of the language was popular with those seeking more social equality. Yet the anarchy of the war placed Luther in an impossible position: he was no democratizing radical; he needed to reassure his secular lords that reformation did not mean revolution; and he needed to make sure that his teaching was clearly understood.’ The simple Marxist interpretation is rubbish — the situation was far more complicated than oppressor / oppressed.

Historical context:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasant_republic

Notably Handeln and the communes of the Swiss Cantons are considered to have "survived" into 19th C.

"The revolt failed because of intense opposition from the aristocracy, who slaughtered up to 100,000 of the 300,000 poorly armed peasants and farmers."

Quite a slaughter. Today we also have indirect slaughter - billionaires versus the rest of the world.

The medieval days, though, were quite tragic because those peons and farmers were factually slaves, depending on the area (there were a few with less restrictions for a while, but ultimately it was slavery). Some of those wars were briefly won by the peons, but in just about any case where they had some victory, lateron they had a huge defeat. Even those who survived were either later executed, or lost their wealth because those who fought for the aristocrats were often rewarded with possessions of others here. In some european countries there is still "nobility". They still have unfair wealth. They should give that to the people.

Crazy how obscure episodes of world history land randomly on the front page - how does it even happen?

I grew up in Germany but I don’t think we covered this in history class - maybe I forgot about it, the whole medieval period is mostly a blur for me now