The German Peasants' War: a summer of fire and blood

Summary

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Detailed Summary: "The German Peasants' War: a Summer of Fire and Blood"

History Extra Podcast | Date: September 28, 2025
Host: Emily Briffett
Guest: Prof. Lyndall Roper (Regius Professor of History, University of Oxford)

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the explosive causes and enduring consequences of the German Peasants’ War (1524–1525)—a mass uprising across German-speaking lands that saw peasants, townsfolk, and some nobles challenge feudal oppression, only to be met with brutal defeat. Drawing from her acclaimed book, Summer of Fire and Blood, historian Lyndall Roper argues for the Peasants’ War to be restored to its pivotal place in Reformation history, highlighting not only its violence and devastation but also its radical vision of freedom and equality.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why "Summer of Fire and Blood"? (02:32–04:04)

• Fire: The summer of 1525 saw widespread burning; "half of the monasteries and convents" in the affected regions were attacked, many set alight along with numerous castles.

  • Quote: “If you'd been around in that summer, you would have seen fires.” (03:07, Roper)

• Blood: The rebellion ended in massacre—estimated 70,000–100,000 deaths. Chroniclers spoke literally of “streets running with blood.”

  • Quote: “It really was a summer of fire and then of blood.” (03:57, Roper)

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2. The Forgotten Cataclysm at the Heart of the Reformation (04:04–06:44)

• Historical Amnesia: The Peasants’ War is often neglected, overshadowed by Martin Luther and church reform.

• Roper sees this as "a hole in the middle" of the Reformation: the trauma fundamentally changed the social and religious landscape—especially the role of convents and monasteries in postwar “Counter-Reformation” efforts.

  • Quote: “It's a disaster, a traumatic event … I just think you can’t understand the shape of the Reformation unless you think about that hole.” (05:13, Roper)

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3. Peasant Life Before the War: Feudal Bonds and Everyday Injustice (06:44–08:54)

• About 80–90% of the population were peasants, most tied to the land in personal serfdom—the lord "owns your body," limiting marriages, mobility, and even reproductive choices.
• Paradox: Many oppressive lords were churchmen, despite the Church's teaching of marriage as a free sacrament.

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4. The Spark: From Local Grievances to Revolutionary Movement

(08:54–12:49)

• Peasant unrest had deep roots: legal petitions, small revolts, negotiations.
• In 1524, initial strikes escalate, then, after a winter lull, reemerge in the spring—now with radical theological justifications.
• Key theological drivers:
  • (1) Eucharistic equality: Inspired by Luther’s advocacy for communion “in both kinds”—bread and wine—for all believers.
    • Peasants believed they deserved both because “Christ bought our freedom with his precious blood.”
  • (2) Creation theology: God made the natural world for all, not for exclusive lordly use; peasants challenged enclosures and restrictions on common resources.

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5. Martin Luther and the Peasants: Misplaced Hopes

(12:49–14:02)

• Luther’s teachings fueled peasant aspirations, but he rejected their revolt.
  • Quote: “Absolutely not. That’s really, in many ways, the tragedy of all of this.” (13:03, Roper)
• The movement’s breadth of ideas far exceeded Luther’s narrow doctrinal focus.

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6. A Vision of Brotherhood and Equality (14:02–18:00)

• Not anti-authority: The rebels initially sought fairness, not anarchy. As the movement radicalized, they enacted forms of equality—physically negotiating with lords “at eye level” in public circles.
• Brotherhood was literal: men swore secret oaths, risking mutilation, and invitations (sometimes laced with threats) spread the movement from village to village.
  • Quote: “To swear brotherhood is a very deliberate act ... a really risky thing to do.” (15:45, Roper)

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7. Women's Roles: Visible and Obscured (18:00–23:34)

• The movement’s ethos and language centered on brotherhood and masculine bonds, but women were critical: maintaining farms, carrying messages, provisioning, and direct participation in attacks and atrocities (notably “Die Schwarze Hoffmann” at Weinsberg).
• Women are hard to find in the records, their actions often downplayed by contemporaries’ misogyny.

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8. The Movement Expands: Towns, Urban Workers, and Betrayal

(23:34–25:32)

• The alliance between peasants and townsfolk was crucial, as grievances blurred city/country lines. But towns often “tricked” and betrayed peasant leaders once their own interests shifted.

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9. Leadership, Ideology, and Charisma: The Case of Thomas Müntzer

(26:58–32:29)

• While leadership was dispersed, not just “great men”—some nobles and urban preachers became key figures.
• Roper: Too much historiography seeks a tidy ideology; but the reality was complex, emotional, and locally driven.
• Thomas Müntzer: Charismatic, mystical preacher, pivotal (but not sole) figure, later lionized by Marxists; led armies and embodied the war’s revolutionary spirit.

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10. The "12 Articles"—A Manifesto for a Movement

(32:29–36:14)

• The most influential statement of peasant demands, crafted by urban furrier Sebastian Lotzer.

• Not systematic, but rhetorically potent and widely disseminated—"Christ redeemed and bought us all with his precious blood, the lowliest shepherd as well as the greatest Lord..."

  • Quote: “We are free and want to be free.” (35:10, Roper)

• The printing press amplified the message, forging a sense of unity across diverse regions.

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11. From Uprising to War: Key Events and Escalation

(36:14–38:24)

• The Weinsberg Massacre marked a turning point toward violence, but massacres occurred on both sides.
• Battles such as Lypheim saw peasants forced into swamps to drown; the violence escalated in spring 1525.

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12. Crushing the Rebellion: Military Superiority and Massacre

(38:24–41:49)

• The defeat was piecemeal but persistent; professional mercenaries (returned from Italy) and the Swabian League were decisive.

• Atrocities like the massacre at Lobstein, where peasants seeking sanctuary in a church were burned alive, underscored the terror of suppression.

  • Memorable moment: Roper describes personally encountering ossuaries of the slain, a stark, visceral reminder of the war’s cost. (40:43, Roper)

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13. The Scale of Collapse and Resilience

(41:49–43:01)

• Peasant control—for months—astonished Roper, defying the perceived stability of feudal society.
• Their success owed much to quickly arming themselves with resources plundered from convents and monasteries.

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14. Memory, Aftermath, and the Peasants’ War in Modern Germany

(43:01–46:02)

• The trauma endured in landscape (“Blood Gully” at Frankenhausen) and ongoing acts of insubordination and religious dissent (e.g., Anabaptists).

• Postwar memory deeply divided in East and West Germany: West stressed “individual rights and democracy”; East, “revolution and equality.”

• The Peasants’ War is seeing renewed interest from historians and artists alike, mirroring ongoing debates about protest, change, and national meaning.

  • Quote: “It’s such a vexed and difficult issue … I think both [East and West] have so much to learn from each other … that gives us a sense of the possibility of change and of the realization of dreams.” (45:49, Roper)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the scale of violence and social collapse:
  “People talked about the streets running with blood, and they meant that literally.” (03:39, Roper)

• On the Reformation’s “missing middle”:
  “It’s like the Counter Reformation is beginning from what you might call a zero hour.” (05:54, Roper)

• On peasant brotherhood:
  “There’s just so many ways in which they act out equality and brotherhood.” (14:53, Roper)

• On rhetorical power of the 12 Articles:
  “We are free and want to be free.” (35:11, Roper)

• On visiting massacre sites today:
  “It is a different matter when you actually are confronted with people’s bones.” (41:22, Roper)

• On legacy and memory:
  “I think the legacy of it … is also very much about 1989 and about 1990 and the possibilities and limits of reunification.” (44:36, Roper)

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Timestamps of Major Segments

• 02:32–04:04 — Why "Summer of Fire and Blood"?
• 04:04–06:44 — The Peasants' War's place in Reformation history
• 06:44–08:54 — Everyday life and feudal system
• 08:54–12:49 — How the movement grew and its theological underpinnings
• 12:49–14:02 — Luther’s actual stance vs. his influence
• 14:02–18:00 — Brotherhood, equality, and movement dynamics
• 18:00–23:34 — The role of women in the war
• 23:34–25:32 — Towns, betrayal, and shifting alliances
• 26:58–32:29 — Leadership, Thomas Müntzer, and ideology
• 32:29–36:14 — The 12 Articles and their spread
• 36:14–38:24 — From isolated protests to open war
• 38:24–41:49 — Counterattack and defeat
• 41:49–43:01 — The surprising extent of peasant control
• 43:01–46:02 — Legacy, memory, and modern perspectives

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Conclusion

Lyndall Roper’s account challenges listeners to reconsider the German Peasants’ War not as a footnote, but as a dramatic rupture at the heart of the Reformation and European history. Its violence, social aspirations, and legacy of “trauma and hope” remain etched on the German landscape and consciousness. The episode offers vivid storytelling and sharp analysis: a must-listen for anyone interested in revolution, memory, and the ongoing quest for justice and equality.

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Transcript

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[Emily Briffett]

Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine.

[Narrator/Host]

The German Peasants War of 1524-1525 was the largest popular uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution. Thousands flocked to its cause as it swept across vast expanses of German speaking land with speed, determination and fire. But what began with calls for freedom, justice and reform ended in brutal suppression. Lyndall Roper explores the Revolution's explosive causes and consequences in her Cundall History Prize nominated book, Summer of Fire and Blood. Emily Briffett spoke to her to find out more.

[Emily Briffett]

Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast to talk about your new book, all about the German Peasants War. Before we really delve into this story, I'd really like to ask you about the title of your book. It's Summer of Fire and Blood. Why do you think this is an apt name for this major movement of the 1520s.

[Lyndall Roper]

Well, it was a summer of fire and blood in 1525. And fire, because in the course of it, many, many castles and monasteries were set on fire. And we reckon that of the monasteries and convents in the area of the Peasants War, half of them were attacked in some way, many of them were burnt to the ground. And then there were all the castles which were set on fire too. So if you'd been around in that summer, you would have seen fires and then Summer of Blood. It was a summer that ended in the defeat of the peasants. We'll never know exactly how many people died, but our best guess is somewhere between 70 and 100,000 people. That's an extraordinary number. And a lot of that was very bloody killing. People talked about the streets running with blood, and they meant that literally. Or they talked about going through the vineyards on the way to Wurzburg and those vineyards being full of butchered peasants. It really was a summer of fire and then of blood.

[Emily Briffett]

For something that had such devastating impact on the landscape, on people's lives, in your book, you note how this is an event that is somewhat seen as a mere diversion from the historical narrative of Martin Luther and the Reformation. Why do you think this is the case and do you agree? I'm presuming not.

[Lyndall Roper]

Well, it was a really interesting thing for me because I've worked on the Reformation for many, many years, and I'd written a biography of Martin Luther, and the worst chapter in that biography is the one on the Pheasants Wall. And I knew it wasn't good enough. And I also knew that there was just so much more to find out and that I would have to find that out. So I've come to think that it's a real problem that we have forgotten about the Peasants War because it's distorted our view of the Reformation because we've been so focused on Luther and the progress of the Reformation. But if you think about the Reformation, you could imagine it as a giant doughnut with a hole in the middle, and that hole is the Peasants War. It's a disaster, a traumatic event that happens in the very middle of the Reformation. It's 1525. It's scarcely, well, Luther's major writings of 1520. And then this Peasants War happens and that number of people die. And I just think you can't understand the shape of the Reformation unless you think about that whole. So that was why I felt we've got to bring it back into our history of the Reformation. And then if you just think about the number of monastic institutions that were attacked in some way. If over half of them are attacked, then I think we have to think about the Counter Reformation completely differently. It's like the Counter Reformation is beginning from what you might call a zero hour, a point at which there has been a complete collapse of standing in the role of convents and monasteries. And you suddenly see the task that the Counter Reformation was facing.

[Emily Briffett]

Hopefully we're going to touch on some of these after effects later as we go, and hopefully we're going to put right some of this and actually put the peasants War back into the historical narrative today. So to understand the revolution that we're talking about, we really need to contextualize those involved and their worldview. What do you think we need to know about what existence was like in these German speaking territories before we really get into the detail of the story? What, what sort of world should we be thinking about?

[Lyndall Roper]

Well, I think we have to think about a world in which probably 80 to 90% of people are peasants working on the land. And it's a feudal world. In the areas where the peasants war begins. It's an area of personal serfdom that is an abstract. But what that actually means is the lord owns you and owns your body and that has all kinds of implications for your life. It means that you, you're not fully in control of your own reproduction, if you like, because the lord can say, you can only marry someone who is another serf of mine, and that's a huge restriction on who you can marry. And if you don't marry someone that I also own, then you have to pay me a whopping fine. And your children are also my serfs. Now, from the lord's point of view, that makes sense because in the period after the Black Death, lords needed some way of ensuring that they had a labor force and that that labor force didn't run off to some other lord, which they could do through marriage, or go off to a town and start a new life there. So people have often talked about serfdom and seen it as something that wasn't really that problematic because you could still become very rich as a peasant farmer and yet be a serf. But it isn't just that it's a low status thing, it did really interfere with your life and the possibilities of determining it yourself. And when you think that many of these lords were actually monasteries and convents or bishops, then you can see the level of hypocrisy here. Because at the same time, the Church is saying marriage is a Free sacrament. No one can interfere with the free marital promise of a couple to marry one another, not their parents, no one. And yet here are these very lords doing the opposite. And they're church people in many cases. And we know that many of the worst lords were in fact men of the Church.

[Emily Briffett]

So how did this movement then emerge from these conditions?

[Lyndall Roper]

Well, these conditions had been in place for many years and there had been a lot of to and fro, a lot of small scale revolts against lords, a lot of negotiation, a lot of legal cases, because peasants don't just take this lying down. They're constantly engaged in objecting and bringing cases. And that's how it all started. It starts in the summer of 1524. They start objecting to what their lords are doing and they start going on strike. And this becomes quite a big movement. But at this point, it's still very much in the framework of how revolts always used to happen and how disobedience happens, which is usually directed against your Lord. What changes as you go from summer through to autumn is that people start together and then things go a bit quieter over the winter period. And of course, winter is not a good time to take on the lords. The roads are really bad, you can't move so easily and it's very boggy and there's snow. So that's a period in which people meet together and start to think and to organize. And then in the spring it suddenly bursts out. And what makes this revolt of a different scale and of a different conception from what had gone before is that it starts to have a theological justification and it links up with reformation is. And as it does that, it is no longer directed against your individual Lord, but against the lords as a group. And that's what really transforms it. And if I can just explain, there are two key theological ideas, I think, that lie behind it. And one of it is really quite technical. And it goes back to Luther's demand that lay people should also have the wine of communion. And in communion, usually what had happened was that lay people got the host, they got the bread, if you like, but they didn't get the wine because that was reserved to the clergy. That's what sets them apart. And so when Luther says every layperson is also a priest and every layperson ought to get communion as it was instituted by Christ himself in both kinds, they should get the bread and they should get the wine. So once they make that claim, how the peasants see that is the theological idea behind it is that Christ bought our freedom with his precious blood. And what is it that the peasants are not getting? They're not getting the wine that is the blood. And a lot of this happens as you move into the Easter period. So you can see how that demand, because people often have communion once a year at Easter, that demand is just really explosive and has a time dynamic in it as well. So that's the one idea. And the other idea that I think is really important is the idea that God created the world. He created the fish in the water, the birds in the air, the beasts in the forest, the wood, the water, all these resources God created, and therefore they are free for mankind. And therefore the lords can't go around saying, these are our ponds, these are our rivers, and you can't fish in them, you can't hunt animals in the forest, you're not allowed to hunt deer, and these things belong to us. And if you want wood, you've got to jolly well pay for it. And that's what the peasants were putting in question.

[Emily Briffett]

Now, I have a quick query about one of those, in that some of these ideas are stemming from the thinking of Martin Luther. How far did he support these ideas of the peasants that were taken from his ideas?

[Lyndall Roper]

Absolutely not. That's really, in many ways the tragedy of all of this. I think the peasants at first thought that Luther would support what they were arguing for. And this is where I think we really need to rethink the Reformation, because the ideas are Luther's ideas. The idea that every community has the right to call its own pastor. That was what Luther had said early on, and that is demand number one. And the idea that the gospel must be preached by someone who preaches the gospel and not all these things about saints, cults and purgatory and all the rest. The peasants didn't want that. They wanted the pure word of God to be preached. I think that that's meant that we've equated the Reformation with one set of theological ideas of Luther and of some of the other reformers. And we haven't seen the breadth of. Of religious ideas that there were at the time, which were inspired by the Reformation.

[Emily Briffett]

The other thing that I wanted to ask you about, from what you're speaking about, these initial issues that the peasants have, is they are questioning the established order. But are they totally opposed to authority completely?

[Lyndall Roper]

No, I don't think they were. And certainly not to begin with. They're very careful to say, we're not objecting to authority of any kind. We just want things to be fairer. We Want a bit of give and take here. As the moon movement goes on, I think there is a stronger move towards equality. And they say things like, we don't want lords anymore. And I think that isn't about not wanting any kind of authority, but what I think it is about is this really powerful impulse to attack this idea that some people are better than others because we're all Christians. And they really put that into practice. So if, if they're negotiating with the lords, they will hold a meeting in a ring, which is a circular form and a really democratic shape, and they will insist that if the lord comes in, he has to come into that ring to address everyone. And he's got to get off his horse, because when you think about it, it's the extra height that set the lord over you, physically looking down on you. And he has to give that up to come into the ring and negotiate at eye level. And there's just so many ways in which they act out equality and brotherhood.

[Emily Briffett]

Are there any other ways in which this brotherhood is really evident?

[Lyndall Roper]

Oh, yes, because you have to swear brotherhood. So it's really the way that the whole movement gets going and the way it recruits. So how it would work is roughly like this. So you have a village meeting, and the word is wonderful, it's geminde, which means the same word for church congregation. And the geminder will consist of the men of the village and they will meet together and they will swear an oath of brotherhood. And that's a really big thing to do, because if you swear an oath of brotherhood, you're infringing your feudal oath to your lord. And it's a really risky thing to do because the punishment for doing that is the loss of the fingers with which you swore they'd be chopped off. And of course that means you can't work anymore. So to swear brotherhood is a very deliberate act. It's not just a sort of, oh, you know, let's all hang out. It's much more than that. So then what they will do is send word to the next village and they'll often do that by a little letter which runs like this. We have sworn an oath of brotherhood and we invite you to come to us to swear brotherhood with us. And then sometimes it adds, but if you don't come to us, we'll be coming to you. And then there was one peasant commander who added, and you won't be laughing. So it's quite clear that there's a bit of a threat in that. It's not that People are forced to do this. It's just that in a movement like that, it's like how you run a strike. There are always threats involved because you're having to get people to work collectively and to form a movement. And then as the group becomes bigger and bigger and bigger, they start to move off and to march. And that's where I think brotherhood really becomes how you live your life. When you think that people go marching together and very often there'll be people that you haven't met before, they might even speak a different dialect of German from you. They'll certainly have a different lord. And then you march with them, you hear music of drums and pipes and you sleep together in the open. And all those experiences, I think, are really important for what being a brother means.

[Emily Briffett]

If we're talking about brotherhood, does this mean we're solely talking about men? Are women involved too?

[Lyndall Roper]

I think that one of the dynamics of the whole thing is brotherhood and I think that is very much to do with bonds between men. And actually it's often made me wonder whether one of the reasons. Because one of the puzzles about it is if you know that the previous army has been slaughtered and that all the other peasants have been killed, why would you risk battle against the lords when that has already happened? And I think that one of the dynamics of it may be that this feeling that you get. So we know that at Frankenhausen, just on the eve of the battle, they sang Come Holy Ghost. When you have bonds between men in that way, I think maybe it can lead you to overestimate your collective power. And I suspect that may be part of why these groups entered on battles that they must have known rationally that they could only lose. So, yeah, I think masculinity, brotherhood actually is really important to how it all works. But that doesn't mean that women aren't involved. And of course, as a long standing card carrying feminist historian, I thought, oh, it's just that previous historians haven't looked. Well, I looked and women are involved, but they are harder to find than in many other historical events that I've worked on. Obviously, no revolution can work if it doesn't have the support of women. You can't have men going off to fight. If women aren't keeping the farms going, they're the ones who are doing the messages. They're involved in some of the provisioning, they're the fences as well. So with the booty that people have, you've then got to give it to someone to look after it and to Sell it. And that's where we find the women too. And they're involved in some of the events. We hear counts of them meeting together at night and deciding to attack their local Augustinian monastery. And there are some women about whom we know quite a bit. The Schwarzer Hoffman in the black, that's her name. And she is working with the peasant leader, Jecklein Robach, who's one of the most ruthless of the peasant leaders. And she's known as his Ratgeb Inn, which means his counsellor, but it's the female form of counsellor, so it's like she's his adviser S And I think that's so interesting because it gives her a sort of official place. She was involved in one of the very few atrocities on the peasant side, an event that's known as the Weinsberg Atrocity, where a group of nobles were forced to run the gauntlet and 24 of the nobles and their followers were killed. And running the gauntlet is really dishonoring. She boasts of having rubbed the fat of the count onto her shoes. She is said to have blessed the troops, and she's also said to have exclaimed that one should cut the dresses of the noble women off their backsides so that they go around like plucked geese. So she's a really interesting character, and she is clearly a woman who was involved in the fighting, so far as we can tell, or was certainly present at it. But then, you know, she's one of these cases where you just don't know quite what to make of it, because in the end, her own local lord interceded for her and said, huh, we all know about women, they just talk, they never actually do anything. And she's a big mouth. And in that case, misogyny actually worked in her favor. And I think she got off.

[Emily Briffett]

Gosh, what an extraordinary character.

[Lyndall Roper]

Yes, it really is amazing when you come across someone like that. Such examples are actually quite few and far between, and usually we don't get that close. There are examples of women doing stuff, but usually they're people in towns. Interestingly enough, much fewer examples of peasant women acting, although sometimes we do get hints, like the peasant women who supposedly massed outside a convent and started yelling insults at the nuns at night and saying, bring out your bastards. Just really aggressive and attacking their chastity. And the writer of the chronicle who describes all this talks about how they heard this in their beds and how the prioress tried to get them to make light of it and told them to look under their beds to see if there were any peasants hiding there, this is probably the event with just the most amazing sources of very many different kinds that really give you a sense of that world, never directly. And that's been one of the big challenges you have to work around so much, because the peasants themselves couldn't write an account of the war from their point of view. There was one person who did it who wrote a history of the Peasants War, and he took it to Nuremberg to get it printed and published, and the town council got wind of it and they destroyed all the copies and we'll never know what was in that book.

[Emily Briffett]

Oh, that's so sad. That's so unfortunate. For telling this story today, we've been speaking about the peasants for. Are we talking about only peasants? Were there others involved too?

[Lyndall Roper]

You're absolutely right, Emily. It's much more than just peasants. And one of the ways it works is in alliance with the towns. And it's just really interesting to see how that happens and in what circumstances and for how long. Because in many of these towns you have got movements who are pressing for the Reformation, who want communion in both kinds of. Who are also opposed to the laws. And of course, there's no hard and fast division between town and country. And if you think just of the sheer amount of labourers you need to run a vineyard, there's just so much work involved in doing vineyards, keeping the vines trimmed and all of that. And it's seasonal, so there'll be many people who work part time in the vineyards, part time in town, and of course they have exactly the same grievances, and there are potential who might ally with the peasants. So in many towns what happens is you get movements of revolt in them as well, and they start hooking up with the peasants, and then you get the potential for a takeover of the town. The problem is that in the towns, the peasants are able to get to come on to their side. They're very often not able to keep them for terribly long. Once they move on to the next place, then the towns move back, and the towns are the first to move back in support of the lords and to even trick the peasants. So in Eisenach, we know a group of the peasant leaders went into town to negotiate and they were tricked. They were put into prison and they were executed.

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[Emily Briffett]

Ask you about whether there was any coherent leadership, but as we're talking about a mass movement here, not this drama of the great men, do you think it's perhaps wrong to talk about the leadership of the movement? Do you think it maybe does the rebels a disservice?

[Lyndall Roper]

Oh, what a lovely way of putting it. Yeah, I think that probably is what I think. And yet the leadership is also really interesting. And there are a number of fascinating examples of individuals and their path through the war. What is very striking is that the leaders are not always peasants. Sometimes they're nobles. There's the knight Goetz von Berlichingen who has a prosthesis hand. He has an iron fist and he becomes a peasant leader for a while and then writes an autobiography when he's in his 90s. Looking back on it and boy, is that a pack of lies. So there's someone like that. There are many other examples of local nobles who cross sides. These are poor nobles who can see that the peasants cause is in a sense also theirs, and many of them lose massively. Then there are preachers, former monks, priests who become evangelical preachers and get involved in the peasants war. I think, though, that the trouble with a lot of the historiography is that historians, especially in the 1970s, were working with theories of revolution in which you need an Ideology. And if you didn't have an ideology, then your revolution wouldn't succeed. I know I'm being really unfair and oversimplifying here, but I think that was how revolutions were seen, as a collection of ideas which led to a revolution. And if the ideology wasn't fully worked out, then the revolution wouldn't succeed. And I think that has really been a problem with the way people have thought about the Peasants War. And I think it's a problem for all revolutions because the way ideas work, it isn't by there being a book and then people reading the book and thinking, oh yes, I will do 1, 2 and 3. I think what happens is that people are seized by an idea, they undergo huge personal change. And one has to think about emotions and how important they are. And you have to think also about what people actually do, where they go, what they physically undertake. And then ideas change, they don't remain the same. People learn, especially when they're going through life shattering experiences like this. And that was what I wanted to get a sense of. So I deliberately didn't talk about the various ideas that people have tried to discern in the movement and the various revolutionary programs that they supposedly were. They are very fragmentary. They are written by people who are not characteristic of the movement and not even the chief leaders of it. But there is one figure who is really important, and that's Thomas Muntzer.

[Emily Briffett]

Could you introduce us to him?

[Lyndall Roper]

Well, Thomas Muntzer is one of the most extraordinary and interesting figures of the Reformation period. So he must have been a very charismatic person. He has that ability to listen to other people and to be a sympathetic listener to get what they are saying. So he was a very talented pastor. He was also a mystic and a revolutionary. And he constantly engineers these situations where he's the pastor in an area, the preacher, and then he'll engineer a conflict with the ruler and he'll always have a sidekick. And then the explosion happens and Munczer goes off and the sidekick is sort of left behind to clear up the pieces. And he does this shortly before and as the peasants war is breaking out also in Alsted, where he becomes a really important and inspiring charismatic preacher and eventually is forced to leave. And then he goes to Mulhausen and again starts to introduce a Reformation. And he's a mystic. So he is the person who has perhaps the most developed theology of the Peasants War and a very interesting figure. And he then becomes the sort of revolutionary hero for someone like Karl Marx's co worker Friedrich Engels, who Writes a history of the Peasants War. And what happens with Thomas Muntzer is that he and his co worker lead a huge march through the area around Mulhausen and then they come back and they go to where the peasants are massing at Frankenhausen. And Thomas Munzer is involved in that big battle in mid May. So he is a really important figure, but he's by no means the only figure in the Peasants War and by no means the only theologian in the Peasants War. And not everyone has his ideas, most people don't, but he is a really interesting figure. And of course that battle at Frankenhausen is only one of. It depends on how you count them. But a dozen, maybe 20. It's only one of those many battles with all these different armies that are forming over this massive area.

[Emily Briffett]

And I would like to talk about these in a moment. But while we're just mentioning the ideology, I think it would be remiss of me not to ask you just about these 12 articles you mentioned how the ideology is very disperse. Are these 12 articles just one of many suggestions or are these the 12 articles, as it were?

[Lyndall Roper]

They are the 12 articles. It's just so interesting how they came to be, because going back to how it's not just a movement of peasants. They're not written down by a peasant, they're written down by, we think Sebastian Lotzer, and he is someone who lives in the town of Memmingen and was a furrier. And it's at the point where the peasants war is just beginning and where the peasants around Memmingen were objecting to Memmingen. Memmingen, which was their overlord, because sometimes it's not a monastery, not a noble, not a convent, it might even be a town who owns you. So the peasants had been objecting to this. And what Memmingen got them to do was to write down their grievances. So we have this extraordinary situation. I mean, if you've got a restive populace, the thing you should not do if you're a government is to ask them to write down their grievances, because then they start thinking about them. And so we have these grievances, we don't have them all. There are probably about 300 of them. We have about 30 of them that come from this point, and then we have others from later. And they're really interesting because Sebastian Lotze had these. We have to imagine him holed up in Memmingen in the parlor of the peddlers guild and he's putting them all together. And what he did is really a fantastic feat, because when you read them, you just think, oh, sounds go off in so many different directions. They don't hang together. They're a total mess. They don't follow a logical sequence. How can anybody use these? But what Lotze does is he turns them into 12 articles. And he does that with his wonderful compression and with this amazing style where he really writes things that are unforgettable. So just to give you an example of what I mean, the third article says, for Christ redeemed and bought us all with his precious blood, the lowliest shepherd as well as the greatest Lord, with no exceptions. Thus, the Bible proves that we are free and want to be free. And I just love that and want to be free. It's just such a wonderful statement. And the whole thing is like that. They're unforgettable statements, and they're really a masterpiece of concision. And what's so striking is that that becomes the thing that everybody can appeal to. I think half the time they haven't read them, but they just know that they exist. And here the printing press plays a huge role because we know that there were 25 editions, so something like 25,000 copies are in circulation, and people do things with them. There's one peasant leader who wears them in his shirt next to his breast, and then there's another who describes how they were nailed up in the parlor so that people think of them as a thing that you can agree to, even though some of it doesn't fit your particular circumstances. And I think that is a really important way in which this whole movement is able to expand beyond the local and become something much more widespread.

[Emily Briffett]

We've mentioned here that there's a massacre, that there's several battles, there's armies involved in this. When does this move from being isolated strikes about individual grievances to something that's.

[Lyndall Roper]

More akin to a war that happens gradually? In most accounts of the war that were written at the time, the key event is seen as the Weinsberg Massacre. This is the point where it becomes clear to the laws that this isn't a peaceful kind of protest. And it's not just about the convents and monasteries, but it's about them, too. And of course, it's bound to be about both, because if you think about the church in this period and who many of these abbots and abbesses are, not all of them, but many of them come from the very same families as these rich nobles. So, of course, it's combined so that is seen as being the point at which the peasants are clearly violent, but they are only responding to what has been happening on the lord's side by this point. And you've already had one of the first battles, the Battle of Lypheim, which happens in early April. It's outside the town of Lypheim, and you go down the road and then you're down in this hollow, and it's a very wet, boggy area. So the Danube river is down there and a whole lot of little tributaries. And even now, today, when you walk down there, you just feel like you've entered this wetland. And when you think that the Danube wasn't a carefully banked up river, which it now is, but then it followed a different course all the time. And what happened there was that the armies of the lords forced the peasants into that swampy, boggy area and into the river, and hundreds of them drowned. And as they put it, like the pigs.

[Emily Briffett]

I think we can see that transition point here between the summer of fire towards a summer of blood. The tide seems to be turning quite decisively against the movement. Could you share with us what happened through the spring of 1525 that led to this rebellion being crushed ultimately?

[Lyndall Roper]

Well, even the Battle of Lipheim doesn't end it, so it sort of comes to an end in the southwest a little bit earlier, but really it's at its peak through the months of April and round to the middle of May, and even the middle of May, when you've got about half a dozen battles, doesn't end it, and it keeps on going and it takes another month or so, and then even really through quite a bit of the autumn, before it's finally and irrevocably put down. And even then the lords are still worried that there will be further revolts. But the tide certainly begins to turn in the middle of May. One of the reasons why this can happen is that by that point you've had the Battle of Pavia in Italy, and the mercenaries who were involved in fighting there then come on the market again. And so it's possible to buy mercenaries and for the Swabian League, first of all, to use them to try and put the revolt down. And that's what they're doing at Lypheim. They're using some of these mercenaries, but still having quite a bit of difficulty, because those mercenaries don't want to put down their own neighbours and own kinsfolk, and they want to be paid. And so they're constantly engaging in revolt. So it's quite A complicated situation. And the Swabian League army simply has too many places that it has to be, and it can't be in all of them at once. And then it's the coalition of leading princes, and the first one of them to really take the field is Philip of Hesse. And then gradually a coalition is put together of princes who do put the revolts down in the end, who are involved in Frankenhausen. And then there are very, very bloody battles in Alsace, a series of them, really dreadful atrocities, especially at a place just near Severne where one of the worst massacres happens. But it's a pattern that you get in many places, and there the populace are terrified, so they rush to the church, they seek refuge there. And then the troops set the village on fire. This is the village of Lobstein, and they set it on fire in all four corners, as the chronicle said. And so the people in the church raised their hats at the windows at a sign of surrender, but it was too late, and they all perished. And one of the most shocking experiences for me was when we were cycling through that area. We turned off to go to Lopstein, and you can see that hill for quite a distance away. Of course, the church was destroyed, so you can't see that church. There's a new one there. And at first I thought there was nothing left, no physical evidence of what happened. And then I saw in the corner there was a catacomb, a little ossuary, and there are girls in the front, and you can look in and you can see the bones of the peasants. It's all very well to write about it and to read the sources. It is a different matter when you actually are confronted with people's bones.

[Emily Briffett]

It's a very devastating end to such a movement. Do you think the peasants ever stood much of a chance against the forces of the lords?

[Lyndall Roper]

No, I don't think they did. And yet what I find more surprising is their success, because really, they were pretty much in charge for, depending on how you counted, a couple of months. That is an extraordinary success. And it was so surprising because this seemed such a stable society. It seemed to have a system of rulership that had tentacles going down right to village level, where everyone was imbrigated in it all. And as a system that's held together by kinship networks, and yet suddenly it switches and the whole thing comes crashing down. That's what I find more remarkable, actually. And I think the other extraordinary thing is that it was able to keep going for so long and that it was able to arm itself and it was able to provision itself. And I think the key to understanding how that is possible is the way they were able to plunder convents and monasteries. And I think that made them better armed, better resourced than many revolts. Well, any revolt before and many, many since.

[Emily Briffett]

What do you think we could say is the lasting legacy of the German Peasants War that we should point to? And also, how do you think the memory of the German Peasants War has been understood and utilised in the years since?

[Lyndall Roper]

I think the legacy of it, and that's been one of the things I've been really interested in, because when an event like this happens, which is so traumatic, it's also an event that is dangerous to talk about since. So I've been looking for, where are there hidden monuments? Where are things that seem to tell you about what this experience was like? And sometimes those are monuments in the landscape itself. So like in Frankenhausen, on that battlefield, there is a thing called the Blood Gully, which is still there today, and it's a path leading down into town. So that's in the landscape itself itself, which commemorates the flight of these people down into town. You can see it also in the ongoing revolts, acts of insubordination, and in something like the movement of the Anabaptists, which takes up many of these ideas. But as for what it has meant since, I did not expect people in Germany to be that interested in the Peasants War, and indeed, there has been been really nothing written on the Peasants War for the last 30, 40 years. And then suddenly this year, there've been a whole flood of new, wonderful histories of the Peasants War. And there's a new generation starting to think about it. But it's not just historians, it's artists, it's theater, it's singers, it's dramatists and it's politicians. And this is why it's such a vexed and difficult issue, because the former east and the former West Germany have diametrically opposed understandings of the Peasants War. And the generations have completely different socializations and childhood memories which they're also bringing to this. And so really, I think now the way this is being commemorated is also very much about 1989 and about 1990 and the possibilities and limits of reunification. The way that the west commemorates it is it's all about individual human rights and democracy, whereas the way that the east commemorates it is it's about revolution and it's about equality. And I think both have so much to learn from each other, and that's what I'm hoping that in the end it will be possible to do to bring those two visions together and to arrive at a new understanding of the Peasants War that takes it seriously as a movement that makes us rethink the past and that gives us a sense of the possibility of change and of the realization of dreams.

[Narrator/Host]

That was Lyndall Roper Regis professor of History at the University of Oxford. She was speaking to Emily Briffet. Lyndall's book Summer of Fire and Blood has been nominated for this year's Cundle History Prize. To find out more about the Cundle Prize, head over to KundalPrize.com.

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