In 1525, an army of revolting peasants seemed unstoppable – but a brutal end was on the horizon

In the spring of 1525, the German countryside erupted.

Across the patchwork of states that made up the Holy Roman Empire, tens of thousands rose in arms, sacked castles and looted monasteries. For a few months the rebels looked unstoppable. Then, as summer wore on, their movement collapsed.

“It was a disaster,” says historian Lyndal Roper, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast: “a traumatic event that happens in the very middle of the Reformation.”

The German Peasants’ War of 1524-1525 was the largest popular uprising in western Europe before the French Revolution. It spread at pace from the Black Forest through Swabia, Franconia, Saxony and Thuringia. What began as demands for redress turned into a continent-wide crisis that took thousands of lives.

Europe in 1525

The Holy Roman Empire wasn’t a single kingdom but a mosaic of principalities, bishoprics and free cities owing loose allegiance to an emperor.

Peasants shouldered rents, labour services and tithes to multiple overlords. In the 1510s prices rose sharply while wages lagged, and harvests failed in some years. Local lords tightened control over forests, rivers and game, fencing off resources that peasants had long used for food and fuel.

At the same time, the Reformation was remaking Europe’s moral language. Martin Luther’s call to place scripture above church authority gave ordinary people a new set of ideas about rights and conscience.

“One of the theological ideas behind it,” Roper explains, “is the really important idea that God created the world. He created the fish in the water, the birds in the air, the beasts in the forest, the wood, the water – all these resources were created by God, and therefore they should be free for mankind.

“And therefore, the lords can’t go around saying: these are our ponds, these are our rivers, and you can’t fish in them, you can’t hunt animals in the forest, you aren’t allowed to hunt deer.”

The Twelve Articles

By early 1525 rebel bands, known as Haufen, were forming regional alliances and putting their case to the world.

In Memmingen, Swabia, spokesmen drafted the Twelve Articles, a manifesto that asked for the right of ordinary people to choose their own pastors, have fair tithes and rents, an end to serfdom and freedom to fish, hunt and use wood for fuel.

It framed social demands in religious language: if scripture didn’t forbid it, why should lords?

Princes and abbots recognised how dangerous this was: disruptive ideas that were easy to copy and carry from village to village. Townspeople, miners and some lower members of the nobility joined in, while other powerful figures were coerced to lead peasant forces under duress.

A revolt on the march

As spring turned to early summer, the rebels won startling gains. Castles fell, and abbeys surrendered treasure and stores. The rebels’ stocks came, Roper notes, from the same institutions they attacked.

“What I find more surprising is their success,” she says. “Because they were pretty much in charge for a couple of months. That was an extraordinary success.”

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“The rebellion was able to keep going for so long, and it was able to arm itself and it was able to provide provisions for itself,” she explains. “And I think the key to understanding how that is possible is the way they were able to plunder convents and monasteries. And I think that made them better armed and better resourced than many revolts.”

The shock was felt across Europe.

“Many monasteries were burnt to the ground, and the castles were set on fire too,” says Roper. There was a sense that the established order was failing.

Why the tide turned

However, the rebels’ success brought attention. And attention eventually drew an organised response.

“Really the war is at its peak through April to the middle of May of 1525,” Roper says, “but even then, it doesn’t end. It’s only in the autumn when it’s finally and irrevocably put down. And even then, the lords are still worried that there will be further revolts. But this tide certainly begins to turn [against the rebels] in the middle of May.”

The reason for the change of fortunes? Fresh troops had become suddenly available to those looking to suppress the peasants and restore order.

“By that point, you’ve had the battle of Pavia in Italy,” Roper explains, “and the mercenaries who are involved in fighting there then come on the market again. And so it’s possible to buy mercenaries to try and put the revolt down. And, gradually, a coalition is put together of princes who do put the revolt down in the end.”

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Veteran Landsknecht – pike-and-shot soldiers hardened in the Italian Wars – were hired by coalitions such as the Swabian League. Their artillery, cavalry and discipline exposed the weaknesses of peasant armies, which were large but poorly.

Key defeats followed in quick succession, most famously at Frankenhausen in Thuringia in mid-May, where thousands of rebels died.

A summer of blood

The repression was brutal, and magnates meant to make an example.

“These are very bloody battles; really dreadful atrocities,” says Roper, highlighting the particular brutality of an example from the village of Lupstein. “The populists are terrified, so they rush to the church, they seek refuge there, and then the troops set the village on fire in all four corners. And so the people in the church raised their hats at the windows as a sign of surrender, but it was too late and they all perished.”

In all, as the fighting came to an end, the toll was extraordinary.

“We’ll never know exactly how many people died,” she notes, “but our best guess is somewhere between 70,000 and 100,000 people. That’s an extraordinary number, and a lot of that was very bloody killing. People talked about the streets running with blood and they meant that literally, or they talked about going through the vineyards and those vineyards being full of butchered peasants. It really was a summer of fire, and then of blood.”

By autumn, organised resistance had collapsed and many of its leaders were executed. Communities that, briefly, held some kind of power were now forced back into deference.

Politically, the defeat strengthened territorial rulers and leagues like the Swabian League. In many regions dues were reimposed, seigneurial rights tightened and surveillance was increased.

But the Twelve Articles remained a landmark in the language of rights, and the spirit of the Lutheran Reformation persisted.

Lyndal Roper was speaking to Emily Briffett on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.