VII. The Origin of the Great Peasant War

We have already had occasion to speak of the antagonisms which led to the peasant wars, but it now becomes necessary to point out how the position of the German peasantry at the beginning of the sixteenth century differed from that of their predecessors.

The period of the Hussite Wars may be fairly considered as approximately the line of demarcation at which the decline of the peasantry began, not only at different periods and in isolated localities, but universally.

We see the principal cause of this in the growth of capital, and in the autocratic power of princes with which it was allied.

The inevitable consequence of the development of production and trade in commodities was the increase of capital: Capital, and above all commercial capital, requires a strong government to ensure the home market and to make competition in the world’s emporiums possible. Hence the capitalists supported the development of autocratic princely power, with its two great tools, bureaucracy and mercenary troops. They assisted the princes in their conflicts with the undisciplined masses not with their persons, but rather with their purses, while the latter on their part sought to maintain their hard-won freedom and rights; the nobles and the Church being ranged on one side and the peasants and petty townsmen on the other. In this struggle it was very much to the advantage of the princes and capitalists that the antagonistic classes themselves thus capitalists stood in sharp opposition to each other, and were in a state of embittered conflict.

Capitalists and princes managed to make all these classes more and more dependent on them. Every one sought to throw off his own burden, which thus fell finally with redoubled weight on the lowest ranks of the people; i.e., the city proletarians and the peasants, these forming the great mass of the population. The revolution in prices increased the effect of these burdens.

But while the pressure on the lower classes was augmented, their power of resistance was at the same time diminished. If the position of the peasants themselves was improved in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, they did not owe it to the flourishing condition of the towns, particularly the numerous small country towns, in which they found a support against the common enemy. During the fifteenth century, in Germany, the towns fell more and more into dependence on the princes, their independence being finally lost by the end of the century. The comparatively small number which had managed to guard their freedom were mostly large cities, the ruling classes of which had themselves taken the most active interest in the peasant exploitation. These republican cities (and among them Nurenberg was by far the most important) were as much in favour of the princes as Prague had been during the Hussite Wars; but the small town-bourgeois had been the backbone of democracy, and in proportion as these lost their independence the democratic parties lost their strength also.

But the modification of town life made the position of the peasants worse in yet another way during the fifteenth century. Till the fourteenth century, the towns had been the places of refuge which stood open to the peasantry. This compelled the landowners, if they did not wish to lose their labourers, to attach the peasants to themselves; when possible by force, but where force would have failed by kind treatment.

All this was now changed. In the fifteenth century the closing of the guilds against the far too great influx of labourers became more general. This led to the oppression not only of the unorganised town proletariat, but of the peasantry likewise. The path to prosperity in the towns being thus closed to them, it is not surprising that antagonisms should spring up between the petty citizens and the towns and the peasantry, sometimes indeed bridged over by alliances against their common enemies – the Church, the nobles, princes, capitalists – alliances which, however, made their friendship even then a very cool one.

The more the towns ceased to be places of refuge for the peasantry, the less necessity there was for the landowners to be careful of them, for they felt they had a hold on them, since they had nothing to gain in the towns and were not completely destitute in the country. The towns were becoming more and more closed even to the proletarians. A country proletariat now came into existence, which was increased by the diminution and dispersion of the feudal retainers, a natural consequence of the advance into the country of the production of commodities, and the thirst for gold connected with it. The reigning princes promoted this advance wherever they could do so, in order to lessen the independence of the nobles, which was a danger to them.

But the development of production in commodities gave also a greater value to the land; on the one side prompting the country communes to be exclusive, and on the other side causing the landowners to lay claim to and appropriate the common property of the commune as their own private possession.

Let us now consider what all this means. The places of refuge for landless people became closed; at the same time the number of landless people was increased by the natural growth of the population, by the dispersion of the retainers of the nobility, and by the ever-growing burden on the peasantry through State taxation, demands of landlords and the interest of usurers. Hence we cannot wonder that the country proletariat rapidly augmented.

Moreover, it was chiefly the ragged proletariat from which sprang beggars and swindlers, as well as robbers and soldiers.

In the fourteenth century the mercenaries had still been to a large extent the younger sons of peasants, seeking for adventure and booty, who returned to their peasant condition after a few years of military service they shared the class interests of their kin, and were. therefore not available for military service against the peasantry – at least in their own country. After their return from war, they augmented the number of peasants capable of bearing arms. In the fifteenth century the ragged proletariat became more and more prominent among the soldiery; the unclassed, so to speak, who no longer recognised any class-interests, but went through thick and thin for their masters, and were everything to every one – so long as they were paid.

The military capacity for resistance on the part of the peasants must have been diminished by this mercenary spirit and lack of class-feeling, and even to a greater degree by the development which had taken place in the art of war. We have already seen how the Taborites revolutionised this art, and it developed still further in the line adopted by them, for it became increasingly important to exercise the population in the use of weapons, and to train bodies of men in skilful evolutions, in discipline, and in concerted and prompt simultaneous operations of the separate divisions of the army. These new tactics had made democracy invincible in the hands of the Taborites, and now determined the military superiority of the opponents of democracy. The regular soldier was alone in a position to practise these tactics, for the peasants and petty townsmen had no time at their disposal during the insurrections occurring in the second half of the fifteenth and in the sixteenth centuries, in which to train a standing army in their midst, at all comparable with that of the Taborites. That side therefore which could pay the regular soldier secured the victory.

The application of gunpowder to military purposes, which had made rapid strides since the Hussite Wars, operated in a similar way. Gunpowder has been called a democratic invention, because it put an end to knighthood but we cannot discover anything “democratic” in the use made of this invention. The influence of gunpowder in breaking the power of the lower nobility is often very much over-estimated, for it must not be forgotten that it helped quite as much to break up the resistance. of the peasant troops as that of the knightly armies. The economic and military bankruptcy of the lower nobility was determined before the use of fire-arms had begun to be of essential importance in the art of war. The development of fire-arms is the last link in that chain, which was forged in the sixteenth century; after that period the one thing most necessary for carrying on war was money, money – and once again, money! To purchase fire-arms for the exigencies of war and to employ them for that purpose was the privilege of the wealthy possessors of power – i.e., the great towns and the princes. They helped to cast down knighthood, not in order to favour the peasants and petty townsmen, but to afford advantages to capitalists and to uphold princely dominance.

The cost of the military overthrow of the nobles fell upon the peasantry. In the fourteenth century the noble had been hard pressed from above and from below at the same time; from above by the princes (in alliance with the middle class); from below by the peasants. Long did he seek to defend himself from both but finally he submitted to the princes, who henceforth undertook the task of keeping his peasants down. He sold his independence in order to establish his power over his people more firmly for the future.

This change in affairs was not carried out everywhere in the same way or at the same time. In North Germany, and particularly in the eastern portion of it, it was brought about much later; but in South and Central Germany the peasant felt its oppressive effects as early as the fifteenth century, and, certainly, the nearer we approach to the sixteenth century the more down-trodden he became. At the beginning of that era his position had become unbearable, according to the apprehension of those times, though it differed in many respects advantageously from that of the working classes of town and country in the present day.

The increase of rents payable in labour, kind, or money, the greater dependence on the lords of the soil, the confiscation of peasant commune property in field and wood in favour of the landlords (the confiscation of the peasant’s private property took place a little later) could not of course be carried out without violent opposition from the despoiled people. During the fifteenth century one popular insurrection followed another, and they became more frequent and more embittered the further the century advanced.

Then came the Reformation movement, which convulsed the whole nation, and united, at least temporarily, all the local antagonisms into one national class-opposition which extended over almost the whole kingdom. Now also the various peasant agitations joined in one single great movement to throw off the yoke which was crushing them to the ground – the last and most powerful of the great strainings of every nerve among the lower classes on the European continent which had taken place for centuries.

Putting England out of the question, we do not find a similarly grand movement till 1789 in France, where it took place under totally different and more favourable conditions. Irresistible as was the latter revolution, that of 1525 carried the germs of death deep within it from the very first.

With the peasantry other classes rose in arms. Society is much too complicated to make it possible for one class alone to create a great revolutionary disturbance. Nevertheless it is always one class to whose share the vanguard falls in the present day it is the proletariat: in 1789 it was the petty citizens: in 1525 the peasantry.

The allies of the latter we know already; in 1525 the same classes fought together which had assembled under the banner of the Taborites. Now, as then, a portion of the bankrupt lower nobility took their places by the side of the rebels, chiefly in prominent positions as leaders in which position some became heroes through their loyal adherence to their convictions (such as Florian Geyer), while others proved traitors (like Götz von Berlichingen). A large portion also of the town population joined the peasantry, especially in the small towns, the proletariat always being in the front rank. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the condition of German towns differed from that of the Bohemian in the beginning of the fifteenth. The cities were far more intellectually advanced, but politically they had lost much of their independence, and the proletariat was still the only trusty ally of the peasants. The trade-masters and even the trade-journeymen had been estranged from them. In 1525, therefore, the brunt of the struggle lay more on the peasantry than was the case in the Hussite Wars. The towns interfered but coldly, and the movement found no such support as was offered by Tabor a hundred years before in Bohemia. The cities actively expressed their sympathy for the peasantry, not in military but in intellectual relations by influencing their programme.

On the other hand, the insurgents, of 1525 found allies which the Taborites did not have – namely, the miners. These men lived and worked together in great numbers, possessed arms and knew how to make use of them. They were trained in warlike evolutions, and accustomed to be kept under discipline. From a military point of view they stood at a far higher level than all the other ranks of the neighbouring classes of their day, and wherever they entered into any conflict with energy the insurrection remained, in a military sense, invincible.

During the course of the year 1524 every one who was in close touch with the peasants saw clearly that matters must come to a violent crisis, and to a man like Münzer this could not remain a secret. Every peasant had had the same experience as he with shouts of joy they had hailed Luther, who had allowed himself to be borne along on the tide of popularity, stirring up the expectation of all classes. But when the common enemy appeared to be vanquished; when the Pope and his protector, the Emperor, had shown their own impotence in Worms, 1521 when the old authority was overturned, and the question was how to bring about the new order of things when class-antagonisms showed themselves more strongly; when it became necessary to decide the question who should appropriate the fruits of Church reform, the lower or the higher classes – then Luther could come to no decision so long as he was not compelled to do so. From the very first the only determined stand he took was against the communistic enthusiasts; but he resisted every attempt of the lower classes to derive material benefit from the Reformation, by favouring each step taken by the Princes in this direction. They were to become the owners of the Church property, not the peasants. “It is not our business to attack the monasteries,” he writes, “but to draw hearts away from them. When, then, churches and monasteries are lying deserted, let the reigning princes do with them what they please.”

In 1524 it became more and more evident that the lower classes had nothing to expect from Luther’s Reformation. Only through their own power and an armed force would they be able to free themselves from the yoke which was weighing so heavily on their shoulders.