The Peasant War in Germany

burghers and four peasants, to grant him a civil list, and to confiscate the monasteries and
the endowments in favour of the State treasury.
Duke Ulrich met these revolutionary decisions with a coup d’état. On June 21, he rode
with his knights and councillors to Tuebingen, where he was followed by the prelates. He
ordered  the  middle-class  to  come  there  as  well.  This  was  obeyed,  and  there  he  continued
the  session  of  the  Diet  without  the  peasants.  The  burghers,  confronted  with  military
terrorism, betrayed their allies, the peasants. On July 8, the Tuebingen agreement came into
being, which imposed on the country almost a million of the Duke’s debt, imposed on the
Duke some limitations of power which he never fulfilled, and disposed of the peasants with
a few meagre general phrases and a very definite penal law against insurrection. Of course,
nothing  was  mentioned  about  peasant  representation  in  the  Diet.  The  plain  people  cried
“Treason!”  but  the  Duke,  having  acquired  new  credits  after  his  debts  were  taken  over  by
the  estates,  soon  gathered  troops  while  his  neighbours,  particularly  the  Elector  Palatine,
were  sending  military  aid.  Thus,  by  the  end  of  July,  the  Tuebingen  agreement  had  been
accepted all over the country, and a new oath taken. Only in the valley of Rems did Poor
Konrad offer resistance. The Duke, who rode there in person, was almost killed. A peasant
camp  was  formed  on  the  mountain  of  Koppel.  But  the  affair  dragged  on,  most  of  the
insurgents  running  away  for  lack  of  food;  later  the  remaining  ones  also  went  home  after
concluding an ambiguous agreement with some representatives of the Diet. Ulrich, whose
army  had  in  the  meantime  been  strengthened  by  voluntarily  offered  troops  of  the  cities
which, having attained their demands, now fanatically turned against the peasants, attacked
the  valley  of  Rems  contrary  to  the  terms  of  the  agreement,  and  plundered  its  cities  and
villages. Sixteen hundred peasants were captured, sixteen of them decapitated, and the rest
receiving  heavy  fines  in  favour  of  Ulrich’s  treasury.  Many  remained  in  prison  for  a  long
time. A number of penal laws were issued against a renewal of the organisation, against all
gatherings  of  peasants,  and  the  nobility  of  Suabia  formed  a  special  union  for  the
suppression of all attempts at insurrection. Meantime, the chief leaders of Poor Konrad had
succeeded in escaping into Switzerland, whence most of them returned home singly, after
the lapse of a few years.
Simultaneously  with  the  Wuerttemberg  movement,  symptoms  of  new  Union  Shoe
activities  became  manifest  in  Breisgau  and  in  the  Margraviate  of  Baden.  In  June,  an
insurrection was attempted at Buehl, but it was immediately dispersed by Margrave Philipp
– the leader, Gugel-Bastian of Freiburg, having been seized and executed on the block.
In  the  spring  of  the  same  year,  1514,  a  general  peasant  war  broke  out  in  Hungary.  A
crusade against the Turks was being preached, and, as usual, freedom was promised to the
serfs  and  bondsmen  who  would  join  it.  About  60,000  congregated,  and  were  to  be  under
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the  command  of  György  Dózsa,
[16]
 a  Szekler,  who  had  distinguished  himself  in  the
preceding Turkish  wars  and even  attained  nobility.  The Hungarian  knights  and magnates,
however, looked with disfavour upon the crusade which threatened to deprive them of their
property and slaves. They hastily followed the individual hordes of peasants, and took back
their serfs by force and mistreated them. When the army of crusaders learned about it, all
the fury of the oppressed peasants was unleashed. Two of the men, enthusiastic advocates
of the crusade, Lawrence Mészáros and Barnabas, fanned the fire, inciting the hatred of the
army against the nobility by their revolutionary speeches. Dózsa himself shared the anger
of his troops against the treacherous nobility. The army of crusaders became an army of the
revolution, and Dózsa assumed leadership of the movement.
He camped with his peasants in the Rakos field near Pest. Hostilities were opened with
encounters between the peasants and the people of the nobility in the surrounding villages
and in the suburbs of Pest. Soon there were skirmishes, and then followed Sicilian Vespers
for all the nobility who fell into the hands of the peasants, and burning of all the castles in
the vicinity. The court threatened in vain. When the first acts of the people’s justice towards
the nobility had been accomplished under the walls of the city, Dózsa proceeded to further
operations.  He  divided  his  army  into  five  columns.  Two  were  sent  to  the  mountains  of
Upper Hungary in order to effect an insurrection and to exterminate the nobility. The third,
under Ambros Szaleves, a citizen of Pest, remained on the Rakos to guard the capital. The
fourth and fifth were led by Dózsa and his brother Gregor against Szegedin.
In the meantime, the nobility gathered in Pest, and called to its aid Johann Zapolya, the
voivode of Transylvania. The nobility, joined by the middle-class of Budapest, attacked and
annihilated  the  army  on  the  Rakos,  after  Szaleves  with  the  middle-class  elements  of  the
peasant army had gone over to the enemy. A host of prisoners were executed in the most
cruel fashion. The rest were sent home minus their noses and ears.
Dózsa suffered defeat before Szegedin and moved to Czanad which he captured, having
defeated  an  army  of  the  nobility  under  Batory  Istvan  and  Bishop  Esakye,  and  having
perpetrated  bloody  repressions  on  the  prisoners,  among  them  the  Bishop  and  the  royal
Chancellor Teleky, for the atrocities committed on the Rakos. In Czanad he proclaimed a
republic, abolition of the nobility, general equality and sovereignty of the people, and then
moved toward Temesvar, to which place Batory had rushed with his army. But during the
siege of this fortress which lasted for two months and while he was being reinforced by a
new army under Anton Hosza, his two army columns in Upper Hungary suffered defeat in
several  battles  at  the  hand  of  the  nobility,  and  Johann  Zapolya,  with  his  Transylvanian
army,  moved  against  him.  The  peasants  were  attacked  by  Zapolya  and  dispersed.  Dózsa
was  captured,  roasted  on  a  red  hot  throne,  and  his  flesh  eaten  by  his  own  people,  whose
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