Peasant revolt

“ The peasant movements which had caused so much anxiety at the diet of Augsburg in 1518, culminated in the Peasant Revolt in which the common man, both in country and town, rose in the name of God's justice to avenge long-standing wrongs and establish his rights. ”

“ Peasant Revolt, 1381.—When a people are in a dissatisfied mood it takes but little to make them do acts of violence. So when a tax collector insulted the daughter of a tiler, her father killed the ruffian. ”

“ My vassals, finding themselves encouraged in resisting the payment of the taxes, are now loudly clamoring that the imposts are exorbitant, and will not pay them! Finally, the most lawless of them, feeling encouraged by immunity, are no longer afraid to declare that the hay-fork of a Breton does not fear the bayonet of a soldier of the King; that if the latter are well armed, the peasants are more numerous; and that the fury of their despair will render them a match for the soldiers when the hour of revolt shall have sounded! It is a call to insurrection! To a popular revolt! ”

“ Rough as they are, they express clearly enough the mingled passions which met in the revolt of the peasants: their longing for a right rule, for plain and simple justice; their scorn of the immorality of the nobles and the infamy of the court; their resentment at the perversion of the law to the cause of oppression.
The Peasant Rising
From the eastern and midland counties the restlessness spread to all England south of the Thames. But the grounds of discontent varied with every district. ”

“ One of the causes which, during the French Revolution, led to peasant revolts lay in the diversity of the peasants' conditions within the separate provinces of the country. There were some backward districts in which the feudal lord and the Church functioned as protectors and advisers, and not as exploiters, of the peasants. ”

“ Weighed down with taxes, they would rebel against misery and tax collectors sooner than against the King, or the monarchy. The rustic population, which consists mainly of vassals and is exploited and oppressed by the clergy, the seigneurs, the tax collectors and the armed forces quartered upon them, would also, driven to extremities by misery, revolt against their sufferings, against the seigneurs, against the priests, against the tax collectors and against the soldiers, but would remain no less indifferent to the form of government than the city folks. ”

“ The peasant revolts, sporadic the Middle Ages through, had for the half-century preceding the Reformation been growing in frequency and importance, but it needed nevertheless the sudden impulse, the powerful jar given by a Luther in 1517, and the series of blows with which it was followed during the years immediately succeeding, to crystallize the mass of fluid discontent and social unrest in its various forms and give it definite direction. ”

“ The recent uprising of the peasantry offered a good opportunity for this tendency. It says: “The recent rebellion, aimed, under the pretext of a crusade, against the whole nobility, and led by a robber chief, has, for all days to come, put the stain of faithlessness on the peasants, and they have thereby forfeited their liberty and become subject to their landlords in unconditional and perpetual servitude. The peasant has no sort of right over his master’s land save bare compensation for his labor and such other reward that he may obtain. ”

“ The peasant revolts were, in general, less in the nature of campaigns, or even of an uninterrupted series of minor military operations, than of a slow process of mobilization, interrupted and accompanied by continual negotiations with lords and princes—a mobilization which was rendered possible by the standing right of assembly and of carrying arms possessed by the peasants. ”

“ The French peasants and farmers were indignant at an occasional day’s corvée, or forced labour, which really represented the modern rent, and at the succession-duties they had to pay the descendants or representatives of their ancestors’ feudal lords. The German, Polish, and Hungarian peasant, on the contrary, crushed beneath the burden of his personal servitude, did not dream of pretending to own the plot of land, which his lord kindly allowed him to cultivate in his few spare moments. ”

“ The poor peasant and pale artisan, whose toil supplied the means for this luxury, heard the shout, and saw the vision, and, ate their black bread, and looked upon the bare-footed daughter and the emaciate wife, and treasured up wrath. The fearful outrages of the French revolution, concentrated upon kings and nobles in the short space of a few years, were but the accumulated vengeance which had been gathering through ages of wrong and violence in the hearts of oppressed men. But those days of kingly grandeur have passed away from France forever. ”

“ Want and misery finally drove the peasants to despair, and under the name of Bagaudæ, or banditti, they began an insurrection which may be placed on a level with the most terrible peasant wars which find a place in history. ”

“ Never was a time so favorable for an uprising of all the discontented elements. It is not going to be a charming affair, and there will be much in the nature of the horrible peasant uprisings of the late Middle Ages. ”

“ By the last quarter of the fifteenth century, however, peasant risings had become increasingly numerous and their avowed aims much more definite and far-reaching than, as a rule, were those of an earlier date. In saying this we are referring to those revolts which were directly initiated by the peasantry, the serfs, and the villeins of the time, and which had as their main object the direct amelioration of the peasant's lot. ”

“ Besides emancipating the peasant he emancipated industry,--everywhere abolishing that strange caste system which divided the population rigidly into nobles, citizens, and peasants, and even stamped every acre of land in the country with its own unalterable rank as noble, or citizen, or peasant land. Emancipation, so to speak, had to be given before enfranchisement. The peasant must have something to live for; freewill must be awakened in the citizen; and he must be taught to fight for something before he could receive political liberty. ”

“ The peasant may be overwhelmed by the dîme, the taille, the corvée, the hundred and one services that knit his tenure to the caprice of a lord: he may be wretched, brutal, ignorant, ill-clothed, ill-fed, and ill-housed: but he has not lost his status: he is not a casual figure in a drifting proletariat: he belongs to a community that can withstand the seigneur, dispute his claims at law, resume its rights, recover its possessions, and establish, one day, its independence.
In England the aristocracy destroyed the promise of such a development when it broke the back of the peasant community. ”

“ And yet, in spite of all these difficulties, the German revolution would have triumphed, had it not been for the fact that the cities, the seat of a social class, which had immediate interest in the downfall of Feudalism, were too narrow-minded and cowardly at heart to see the great importance of the peasant uprising and to struggle for their own liberation. ”

“ The Nobility had no longer the strength to resist the demands of the Crown for men and money, but it still retained exemption from taxes, the jurisdiction and police among its own peasants, and a multitude of feudal rights, which, often enough, degraded the peasant to the condition of a serf, and everywhere bound down agriculture in the most galling bonds. ”

“ The country suffered the evils, without enjoying the benefits, of a revolution! Tumults and assassinations terrified and disgusted the sensible part of the community; a corrupt administration of the resources extinguished patriotism, and neglect ruined the armies: the peasant-soldier, usually flying at the first onset, threw away his arms and returned to his home, or, attracted by the license of the partidas, joined the banners of men who, for the most part originally robbers, were as oppressive to the people as the enemy. ”

“ Do you think—do you believe in your soul—that it is cant? Is it cant that the feudal grip is on all things that live, crushing them like grapes in the press, to its own profit? Does it not exercise its rights upon the waters of the river, the fire that bakes the poor man’s bread of grass and barley, on the wind that turns the mill? The peasant cannot take a step upon the road, cross a crazy bridge over a river, buy an ell of cloth in the village market, without meeting feudal rapacity, without being taxed in feudal dues. Is not that enough, M. le Marquis? ”

“ The Revolution had become a peasant war and, fired to secure their rights, these half-serfs began to raid the estates of the big landowners, robbing the houses, carrying off the stores of grain and flour, driving away the stock and, in many cases, taking over the management and alleged ownership of the landlord's fields. ”

“ It is noticeable, however, that although the immediate causes of the peasant rising were the new burdens which had been laid upon the common people during the last few years, once the spirit of discontent was aroused it extended also in many cases to the traditional feudal dues to which, until then, the peasant had submitted with little murmuring, and an attempt was made by the country-side to reconquer the ancient complete freedom of which a dim remembrance had been handed down to them. ”

“ But, dangerous as the great peasant insurrection appeared for many weeks, and manifold as were the characters and passions which blazed forth in it, the peasants themselves were little more than an undulating mass; the greater part of their demagogues and leaders belonged to another class; on the whole, it appears to us that the intelligence and capacity of the leaders, whether peasants or others, was but small, and equally small the warlike capacity of the masses. ”

“ Others do better: "on pillaging the strong-box of the receiver of the tax on leather at Brignolles, they shout out Vive le Roi!" "The peasant constantly asserts his pillage and destruction to be in conformity with the king's will." ”

“ The years between 1500 and 1650 are the last great age of the peasant uprisings which, in all countries of Western Europe except France and Ireland, are incredible to-day as a romance of giants, and hardly a generation in that stormy period elapsed without one. ”

“ As soon as the peasant emerges from his revolutionary period and becomes the undisputed owner of his land, he supports the readiest that government which not only respects his property, but also protects it from devastation through foreign invasion and civil war. This explains the support given by the French peasants to the victorious Napoleonic Empire, and their hostility to the urban revolutionaries as soon as the latter appeared to be the instigators of civil war. ”

“ The nobility is losing its estates because it has not learned to manage them, and has not recovered to this very day from the abolition of serfdom. But the land does not fall into the hands of the peasants, who need it, but into those of the merchants. The agricultural proletariat remains unprovided for. The peasant cannot raise the taxes. ”

“ No doubt the mass became infected with the peasant spirit, for peasants formed the bulk of the army, especially when the townsman became the munition-worker. The peasant's mind is both childlike and suspicious, slow to anger, secretive, inclined to deep reflection. He attaches himself slowly, and only after long proof, to those who win his reluctant confidence, and deeply tenacious are his purposes. He will defend his land to the death; he loves it as he loves liberty. He insists on his independence as he insists upon equality, and only upon that principle will he submit to discipline. ”

“ Throughout Germany similar slaughter of the peasantry and wholesale executions took place. In many places the reprisal took the dimensions of a massacre, and it is said that by the end of the frightful struggle more than a hundred thousand of the peasants had been slain. As for its political results, the survivors were reduced to a deeper state of servitude than before. Thus ended a great struggle which had only needed an able leader to make it a success and to free the people from feudal bonds. It ended like all the peasant outbreaks, in defeat and renewed oppression. ”

“ The genuine peasant is never ashamed of his rank and calling; he is rather inclined to look down on every one who does not wear a smock frock, and thinks a man who has the manners of the gentry is likely to be rather windy and unsubstantial. In some places, even in French districts, this feeling is strongly symbolized by the practice of the peasantry, on certain festival days, to dress the images of the saints in peasant’s clothing. History tells us of all kinds of peasant insurrections, the object of which was to obtain relief for the peasants from some of their many oppressions ”

“ And so again, on the other hand, I expressly declare that the peasant wars, which, assuredly, were sufficiently garnished with violence and bloodshed,—I declare these wars to have been a movement which was revolutionary only in the imagination of those who participated in them, whereas they were in reality not a revolutionary, but a reactionary movement. ”

“ The whole course of the movement shows a peasantry, not downtrodden and starved but proud and robust, driven to take up arms not so much by misery and despair as by the deliberate will to maintain the advantages which were rapidly slipping away from them.
[125] Serfdom was not by any means universal. Many free peasant villages were to be found scattered amongst the manors of the territorial lords, though it was but too evidently the settled policy of the latter at this time to sweep everything into their net, and to compel such peasant communes to accept a feudal overlordship. ”