This was the biggest rebellion in European history until the English revolution
The Causes
People do not just revolt without cause. There is always a reason that pushes the masses to action. The first major event was the black plague, which happened a few centuries earlier. The black plague killed massive amounts of the working class, meaning the survivors rose in value. This allowed them to get more rights and a higher wage. As social conditions changed and feudalism grew closer to its end it got worse for the workers.
With the slow collapse of the feudal system the most powerful rulers sought to consolidate their power in variety of ways, like using taxes to push more people into serfdom. The lesser nobility were having their own set of troubles. Prices of goods kept rising and their personal wealth started decreasing. To hang onto their lifestyle they started to take more and more from the peasants for themselves. Military technology was also on the rise, making knight's less and less useful, so their wages and status dropped. As military forces became more nationalized instead of localized this put them at odds with the lesser nobility they were once ruled by.[1]
Towns were exempt from taxes. The towns and guilds within them also had the ability to enforce their own arbitrary tax laws on the peasants, like road, bridge, and gate tax. This was overseen by the town patricians, who were wealthy families who alone controlled the trade councils and administrative offices. Over time they also eroded away the rights of peasants on common land, eventually turning it into private property. (This was the start of capitalism, but nobody at that time knew what that would bring.)
Another massive part of the feudal system, religion, was in upheaval too. Martin Luther spoke out against the oppression of the Catholic Church. In that time priests were a higher class and were able to control and exploit the lower classes through taxes and rules. Sadly, Martin Luther only cared about the religious element of oppression. In fact he told the ruling class to slaughter the revolting classes. [1][2][3]
“Let whoever can stab, smite, slay. If you die in doing it, good for you! A more blessed death can never be yours, for you die while obeying the divine word and commandment in Romans 13 [:1, 2], and in loving service of your neighbor, who you are rescuing from the bonds of hell and of the devil.”- Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants By Martin Luther[4]
Instead of Martin Luther, this revolt was lead by another prominent religious figure of the time. Another figure who decided to side with the workers instead of the feudal lords like the priests of old. Thomas Müntzer started off as a fan of Martin Luther, but class conflict was apparent in the town he lived in. He sided with the miners instead of the upper class, and grew to disagree with Martin Luther. His ideals turned revolutionary as he decided that the common people were the “true instruments of god”. He decided Martin Luther was just another mouthpiece of the ruling classes, and proceeded to take matters into his own hands. [3]
The Revolution
The final straw was a series of crop failures which threatened the entire peasant population with starvation. The revolt started in Stühlingen, in the summer of 1524. It quickly spread to Western Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. In total there were around 5 large groups of peasants who joined in this massive revolt. They went all across the country burning the homes of nobles. The townspeople and even some religious leaders joined the revolt, including Thomas Müntzer who rose to the top and became the leader of this revolution-in-progress.
At first it was not very violent, but by the end over a third of the 300,000 who participated in the revolt were dead. Before this, the revolutionaries actually thought they had the upper-hand and made 12 demands of the ruling class and religious institutions.
The first was the ability to choose their own pastor and remove him at will, to make sure he only teaches religion and doesn’t enforce “the will of man”, the next is more of the same but with tithes. The next is a demand to release all serfs so that they can be free, the next is more of the same but with hunting rights. The fifth was taking back the private property of the woodland and turning it into common property, because everybody needs wood and paying massive amounts is exploitation. The next is lowering the amount of duties required of the pheasant to those of the past (forced labor), the next is more of the same but payment and free time in mind. The eighth is more reasonable taxes, the ninth is fair trials and more reasonable laws. The tenth was to return more of the common land, the eleventh was heriot (a tax on the property of the dead, payed to the local lord), the last demand was the right to change the rest of these demands in accordance of the scripture.[5][6][7]
The king agreed to meet with the peasants to speak about these demands peacefully. The king happened to bring an army to the meeting, which for some reason decided to slaughter the peaceful peasants, egged on by our favorite Martin Luther. The survivors were chased down, and anybody with any copies of the documents signed by the king were captured and killed, without a fair trial. Very few of the workers had military experience, and there were even less weapons around for them to use. The estimated number of soldiers was only 6000-8500, and they managed to kill 100,000 peasants.
The conditions didn’t just go back to normal after the war, they got far worse. The war cost a huge amount of money and the only way to pay for it was loans from the new capitalist class being created. Eventually the rulers realised they could not pay the loans back themselves, and the peasantry in the areas that revolted were charged with paying back over twice the original cost of the war.[3]
This war ended in disaster for all of the workers involved. This just shows that those in power will never respect revolutionary demands of the lower classes and their power must be removed by force.