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The German Princes' Responses to the Peasants' Revolt of 1525

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The German Princes' Responses to the Peasants' Revolt of 1525 Central European History 40 (2007), 219–240. Copyright # Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association DOI: 10.1017/S0008938907000520 Printed in the USA The German Princes’ Responses to the Peasants’ Revolt of 1525 Thomas F. Sea HE German Peasants’ Revolt of 1525 represented an unprecedented challenge to the princes and other petty political rulers of the areas involved. While localized uprisings had occurred with increasing fre- T 1 quency in the decades prior to the 1525 revolt and an uneasy awareness of growing levels of peasant discontent was widespread among most rulers of southern and central German lands, the extent of the major rebellion that devel- oped in early 1525 took everyone by surprise. No one was prepared to respond, either militarily or through more peaceful means. Even the Swabian League, the peacekeeping alliance of Imperial princes, prelates, nobility, and cities that even- tually assumed primary responsibility for suppressing the revolt, did little to mobilize its resources for almost six months after the first appeals for help from its members against disobedient subjects reached it.2 When the League did mobilize, its decision created further problems for League members, since most sent their required contingents to the League’s forces only to discover that they needed the troops badly themselves once the revolt spread to their own lands. Since the Council of the Swabian League adamantly refused to return any members’ troops because this would hinder the League’s own ability to suppress the peasant disorders, many members found themselves vir- tually defenseless against the rebels. 1For detailed analysis of some of the more serious of these earlier uprisings, see A. Rosenkranz, Der Bundschuh. Die Erhebungen des su¨ddeutschen Bauernsta¨ndes in den Jahren 1493–1517, 2 vols., Schriften des Wissenschaflichen Instituts der Elsass-Lothringer im Reich (Heidelberg: Carl Winters Universi- ta¨tsbuchhandlung, 1927); Gu¨nther Franz, Der deutsche Bauernkrieg, 10th ed. (Darmstadt: Wis- senschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1975), 1–91; G. Egelhaaf, “Ein Vorspiel des Bauernkriegs aus Oberschwaben,” in Analekten zur Geschichte (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1886), 215–255. 2The League extended the powers of its emergency mobilization committee to include cases of peasant unrest in the fall of 1524 after requests for aid had been received from Archduke Ferdinand of Austria and other members. There was no active response from the League until mid-February 1525, however. See Horst Karl, “Der Schwa¨bische Bund,” in Der Bauernkrieg in Oberschwaben, ed. Elmar L. Kuhn (Tu¨bingen: bibliotheca academica Verlag, 2000), 421–43; C. Greiner, “Die Politik des Schwa¨bischen Bundes wa¨hrend des Bauernkrieges 1524/1525 bis zum Vertrag von Weingarten,” Zeitschrift des Historischen Vereins fu¨r Schwaben und Neuburg 68 (1974): 7–94. For the rationale behind the League’s actions, see T. F. Sea, “The Swabian League and Peasant Disobedience before the German Peasants’ War of 1525,” Sixteenth Century Journal 30 (1999): 89–111. 219 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Athens, on 27 Sep 2021 at 13:41:32, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008938907000520 220 THOMAS F. SEA Nevertheless, some of the more powerful rulers in the areas of the revolt— primarily Imperial princes—decided to take countermeasures of their own in addition to the efforts of the Swabian League, even though by so doing their financial and military resources were strained to the utmost degree. Although it is generally conceded that the princes emerged victorious from the 1525 revolt,3 a careful examination of the military, financial, and political responses of selected German princes reveals how severely tested their resources had been by the experiences of the rebellion. Military recruitment procedures upon which they had counted proved unavailable or unreliable, forcing them to resort to extraordinary measures to raise troops. Such measures in turn required financial resources far greater than those normally available to most princes. Even when they managed to raise military forces for use against the rebels, most princes felt that they needed far more troops than they had. Efforts to maintain the peace within their own lands required spreading their resources thinly in garrisons and patrols that could not always guarantee that the rebel threat would be averted. Some rulers found they could muster no effective resistance to the rebellion. Faced with such difficulties, some princes decided that the best solution was to negotiate with the rebels, only to find that negotiations aroused the suspicions of neighboring rulers and that an agree- ment with the rebels did not always last. By the time the rebellion was suppressed, the princes may have been the “victors,” but their experiences during the revolt had left them with a lasting fear of peasant disorders that could not easily be dispelled, as the post-rebellion measures to prevent renewed uprisings demonstrated. Military Mobilization The German princes theoretically had several levels of military responses available to them for meeting the rebel threat. They could call up the entire force represented by their subjects, forming the Landwehr for the defense of the homeland. They could selectively mobilize their subjects, calling upon those nobles and cities in their lands who owed military 3Classic statements concerning the completeness of the princes’ victory come from authors as diverse as Friedrich Engels, The German Revolutions, ed. Leonard Krieger (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 116–17 (originally published in 1850), and G. Franz, Der deutsche Bauernkrieg, 296–99. See the significant modification of this interpretation by Peter Blickle, The Revolution of 1525, trans. Thomas A. Brady, Jr. and H. C. Erik Midelfort (Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), 176–85. E. Franz, “Hessen und Kurmainz in der Revolution 1525. Zur Rolle des fru¨hmodernen Staates im Bauernkrieg,” in Aus Geschichte und ihren Hilfswissenschaften. Festschrift fu¨r Walter Heinemeyer zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Hermann Bannasch and Hans-Peter Lachmann (Marburg: Elwert [in Komm.], 1979), 628–52, argues that the benefits for a prince depended heavily upon the efficiency of his rule prior to the peasants’ revolt. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Athens, on 27 Sep 2021 at 13:41:32, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008938907000520 THE GERMAN PRINCES’ RESPONSES TO THE PEASANTS’ 221 service. They could recruit and pay experienced Landsknechte. Each of these alternatives presented difficulties.4 Given the nature of the peasant threat, few princes had enough confidence in the loyalty of their subjects to issue a general mobilization order. The results of such orders, for those who did use them, were hardly satisfactory. Both the Count Palatine and the Wu¨rttemberg Regency (acting on behalf of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria) found that the troops they had raised through at least partial mobilization of their subjects were so untrustworthy that they had to be immediately released.5 In some instances, as in Branden- burg-Ansbach and the Bishopric of Wu¨rzburg, the issuance of a general mobilization order backfired completely, driving the subjects of the prince, better equipped than they might otherwise have been, into the arms of the rebels.6 On the other hand, much depended upon the timing of such mobilization orders. Landgrave Philipp of Hesse, who mobilized in mid-April before the uprisings had reached his lands, was able to raise an effective force.7 The Dukes of Bavaria, after resisting the issuance of a general mobilization through- out the early stages of the campaign against the rebels, decided after the attack upon their territories by the Allga¨u rebels on May 11–12 to call up the peasants in the area. This startling decision was based partly on desperation, but also on a desire to convince the restive Bavarian peasantry of the confidence of the dukes in them. In view of the reaction of some of the Bavarian peasants along the Lech river border, who had mobilized of their own accord to protect their villages 4For an attempt at an overall analysis of the princely military alternatives and their relative effec- tiveness, which is unfortunately not always entirely accurate because of incomplete understanding of the Swabian League’s military operations, see S. Hoyer, Das Milita¨rwesen im deutschen Bauernkrieg 1524–1526, Milita¨rhistorische Studien 16, Neue Folge (Berlin: Milita¨rverlag der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik [VEB], 1975), 107–146. 5Baden-Wu¨rttemberg Hauptstaatsarchiv, Stuttgart (hereinafter referred to as WHStA), H54, Bu¨. 10, no. 15–16, 22 (April 23 and 25, May 3, 1525). See K. Hartfelder, ed., “Akten zur Geschichte des Bauernkriegs in Su¨ddeutschland,” Zeitschrift fu¨r die Geschichte des Oberrheins 39 (1882): 390–92, no. 22, 23, 28. 6Wu¨rzburg: Lorenz Fries, Die Geschichte des Bauernkrieges in Ostfranken von Magister Lorenz Fries, A. Scha¨ffler and T. Henner, eds., 2 vol. (Wu¨rzburg: Verlag des historischen Vereins von Unterfran- ken, 1883), 18–20. Cf. R. von Thu¨ngen, Der Bauernkrieg in Franken unter Conrad III, Bischof von Wu¨rzburg (Wu¨rzburg: Kabitzsch & Monnich, 1926), 18–21. Brandenburg-Ansbach: L. Mu¨ller, “Beitra¨ge zur Geschichte des Bauernkriegs im Riess und seinen Umlanden,” Zeitschrift des historischen Vereins fu¨r Schwaben und Neuburg 16 (1889): 10, note 2; C. Ja¨ger, Markgraf Casimir und der Bauernkrieg in den su¨dlichen Grenza¨mtern des Fu¨rstentums unterhalb des Gebirgs (Nuremberg: Kgl. Bayer. Hofbuch- druckerei/G. P. J. Bieling-Dietz, 1892), 12–13, 22, 30. 7This was partly due to Philipp’s own eloquence in persuading his reluctant troops that their inter- ests lay in maintaining his rule. See O. Merx, “Der Bauernkrieg in den Stiftern Fulda und Hersfeld und Landgraf Philipp der Grossmu¨tige,” Zeitschrift des Vereins fu¨r hessische Geschichte und Landeskunde, N.F.
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