From Resistance to Revolt: The Late Medieval Peasant Wars in the Context of Social Crisis

Abstract

Medieval peasants were not always content with their assigned place and occasionally resisted their fate. The forms, dates and places of peasant resistance lead up logically to the second question about the causes and conditions of the escalation from isolated incidents to peasant revolt. In the German Peasant War the preparatory stage was not as in Bohemia, the work of clerics and preachers, but of peasant and urban propagandists. The peasants were well aware of the need for trained and experienced military leadership: and many of the rebels tried to enlist knights as commanders even if they had to be coerced into accepting the commissions. The lessons of the peasant wars of the late Middle Ages were not entirely lost on the victorious lords. In Central Europe mercenaries such as the infamous Armagnacs, ruthlessly exploited the peasants, owing to the fact that the troops were most likely insufficiently supplied and thus forced to live off the land.