Rusticiade in Alsace and Lorraine

While Lutherans, calvinists and Anglicans organize their Churches in Europe, new more radical Protestant currents judge than established Protestantism does not go rather far in the simplicity of biblical Christianity. Several of these groups cause political revolts or attack the churches of which they destroy the images, the stained glasses, the statues and the organ.

They are attacked with an equal violence to the established Protestant Churches and the Catholic church. Luther disapproves this radical upheaval; however, in order to lead to a Pacific regulation, it exhorts the lords to satisfy certain claims of the peasants. Finally, it makes volte-face and severely condemns their recourse to violence in a lampoon of 1525 heading " Wider die mördischen und räubischen Rotten der Bauern " , (" Against the criminal and plundering hordes of the paysans").

Rising in Germany

For the details, to see the article " Revolt of the Bumpkins "

The historians still discuss causes of rising. In the various areas concerned, the condition of the peasants was very variable. Easy plowmen took part in the revolt and the economic conjuncture was not basically bad. It thus was not about a revolt of misery, even if the weight of the royalties, dîme and drudgery were enough heavy to contribute to a real debt.

Twelve articles written in Souabe and adoptees by all the country bands, disputed the ecclesiastical hierarchy and formulated requirements, which included/understood the right to choose their own pastors, the abolition of serfdom, the fishing rights and of hunting, the abolition of many feudal taxes and the guarantee to be precisely treated by the seigneuriaux courts.

Engagements between the peasants and the servants of noble burst in 1524 in Shühlingen, in what is the canton of Schaffhouse today (northern of Switzerland, Black Forest), and the insurrection extended quickly on most of central, Western and southernmost Germany, except for Bavaria. The revolt was particularly violent in Thuringe, where it took a religious turn under the influence of the sect of the Anabaptistes directed by Thomas Münzer.

Pasteur with Zwickau of 1520 to 1521, Münzer supported the farming community in the fight which opposed the guilds of minors and the classes higher. He asserted the divine inspiration and started to preach the supremacy of the interior light on the omnipotence of the Scriptures. He also affirmed that the people, in his simplicity, could accommodate this interior light. Expelled in turn of several cities, to have pushed the peasants and the workmen to be revolted openly, it took share, during one short duration, to the war of the Peasants (1524-1525) then returned in Mühlhausen to take the head of a revolt against the civil authorities and religious local. It succeeds in reversing the feudal mode and organizing during a time a community of peasants in whom all was had jointly. Beaten to Frankenhausen on May 15th, 1525, Münzer was thrown in prison and was carried out.

At the end of this same year, afterwards many atrocities made by the two parts and the death of thousands of people, the noble ones of the league of Souabe succeeded in crushing the rebellion in all Germany, but the revolt continued in Austria until the following year. The German peasants did not obtain any concession ultimately, while in Austria the noble ones abolished some of the injustices which were at the origin of rising. Paradoxically, the opposition of Martin Luther, whose principles had been adopted by the dissatisfied peasants and had inspired their revolt, contributed to the defeat of the rebels.

Insurrection in Alsace and Lorraine

This rising was to be thoroughly prepared because it burst in all the parts of Alsace the same day, on April 14th, 1525, and profited from an effect of total surprise. The authorities could not oppose any resistance. The movement gained Lorraine very quickly. Revolted peasants penetrated in the area of Blâmont, of Saint-Dié. More in north, it gained Dieuze and the baillage of Germany (Lorraine German-speaking). The insurrectionists at the end of April invested the abbey of Herbitzheim which became a great center of gathering where 3000 Lorraine peasants joined the revolted Alsatian ones, - at the beginning of May. The authorities were thus threatened by a dangerous company of destruction of the established order. Also the duke Antoine of Lorraine was at the end of April solved it to assemble a military forwarding.

The Antoine May 4th gathered in Nancy of the infantrymen, the riders and the artillerists, with parts, ammunition and vivres, and was started in direction of Dieuze. The following day it made stage with Vic-on-Pail from where detachments of riders, archers and arquebusiers went to lock the principal Vosgean passages (Saint-Dié, Raon-l' Stage, Blâmont) and Sarreguemines. A troop ordered by the captain of Sarreguemines, Jean de Braubach, thus tried to cut the road to a band of peasants (of which named Hans Zoller de Rimling). A bloody meeting took place in Wittringerhof. The combat stopped when Jean de Braubach was made prisoner and the peasants could join the Alsatian insurrectionists with Herbitzheim.

With Vic-on-Pail, the ducal army counted between 12000 and 15000 men: noble of Lorraine, Champagne, Brie and their soldiers; riders of various origins; lansquenets come from the Netherlands and Germany of north; Spanish infantrymen. May 11th it made movement on Dieuze where it was reinforced by the riders of Claude of Lorraine, count de Guise, brother of the duke and governor of Champagne, and by the lansquenets of another brother of Antoine, Louis de Vaudémont (which had gathered its troop with Pont-à-Mousson).

May 14th, the army was still supplemented in Sarrebourg by the count of Nassau-Saarbrucken and French gentlemen.

Saverne and Lupstein

A party favorable to rising existed with Saverne and the authorities of the city decided to give up the place. May 13rd at the evening of the thousands of insurrectionists penetrated in the city without having to deliver combat. Those of Herbitzheim (which had been started by Diemeringen, Graufthal, Dossenheim) joined them the following day, with their Braubach hostage. Another band still arrived of Neuwiller. Then the commander-in-chief of the Alsatian peasants, Erasme To stack, originating in Molsheim, went in person to Saverne. But in the same time of the riders of the duke of Antoine had invested the castle of Haut-Barr, which dominated the city. The large one of the army, which had left Sarrebourg during the night from May 14th to 15th, settled in front of the ramparts of Saverne and decided to wait the following day.

May 16th a drama occurred with a dozen kilometers from there, with Lüpstein, where three to four thousand peasants had gathered. One does not know precisely which events started the drama, but it seems that a skirmish degenerated and caused a massacre and the fire of the locality. In front of the evolution of the things, the Bumpkins proposed to evacuate Saverne and to leave. But Antoine refused. It required total rendering, the delivery of 100 hostages and obtained the release of Braubach.

The following day May 17th a new incident started a massacre again, in Saverne this time. A brawl degenerated and one killed without understanding in the streets and the houses. It seems that Antoine and the count de Vaudémont did not control any more their soldiers, who reflect with bag all the dwellings, the Town hall, the church. Erasme Gerber was captured and hung. During this Neuwiller time was also occupied and there were there too exactions.

One estimated at approximately 20.000 the number of killed in Lupstein, Saverne and Neuwiller.

Scherwiller

The army left Saverne on May 18th for Marmoutier in direction of the south where the bands of central Alsace (Barr, Ebermunster, Ribeauvillé, Sélestat) aspired to avenge deaths and to continue to defend their cause, while a troop of insurgent had been also formed in the same territories of the duke of Lorraine, in Saint-Hippolyte and Valley-of-Liepvre.

Most important of these troops, that of Ebermunster, ordered by Wolf Wagner, took seat in the west of Scherwiller, where others joined it. This army was not deprived of means: it had of arquebuses and an artillery captured in the places which it had occupied. It profited from the supplement of soldiers of trade, Suisses in particular. It had finally chosen to fight a favorable ground which it knew well.

May 12th, the battle was rough: 500 (?) killed in the ducal army and 4000 with-less for a troop from 15 to 20.000 insurgent.

End of Rusticiade

Beaten in Low and Average Alsace, revolted still held part of the south. The German princes begged Antoine to continue forwarding. Probably struck by the extent of slaughter, he refused and preferred to regain Nancy. The infantrymen gathered with Lunéville and Saint-Nicolas-of-Port where they could sell the product of their spoils. Forwarding did not put a term at the war. The insurrectionists were pitilessly tracked in the south and the area of Wissembourg.

May 24th the duke and his continuation were accommodated triumphantly in Nancy. The forwarding of Antoine had a deep repercussion in Occident. The movement of the peasants expressed at the same time the social dispute and a hostility with regard to the Catholic church. But the chroniclers deliberately reflect the accent on the religious aspect. The victorious duke seemed a crusader, defender pitiless of the threatened catholic faith.

The calm income, Antoine made make a vast investigation in the baillage of Germany. Each household head was questioned and the answers registered on a register. This reveals that much admitted being returned with the gatherings of Herbitzheim and Diemeringen and, sometimes, to have taken part or have attended the plundering of the cures. All - or little is necessary some stated to have left the bands before the confrontation of Saverne, at the request of the provosts. It does not seem that this investigation led to any repression.

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