The state and the people: the peasant rebellions

Although social inequality was a characteristic feature of all states at the time, whether absolutist or constitutional, peasants and ordinary people were not passive recipients of the decisions and orders of their superiors.

The direct cause of the rebellion that broke out in 1381 was the third poll tax in four years, imposed by Parliament.¹⁶² The tax was set at a fixed amount, decided in 1334, but now the burden on the individual tax-payer had increased because of the reduction of the population resulting from the Black Death. Moreover, the rebels suspected that the money would be wasted in inefficiency and corruption, in accordance with the severe criticism directed at the authorities, in particular, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, son of King Edward III who had died in 1377. The new king, Richard II, was still a minor, aged 14. The rebellion began in Essex in May and spread in late May and early June until it included the larger part of southern England. Two peasant armies converged in London on 12 June, where they burned the palace of the bishop of London and the hated John of Gaunt’s Savoy palace and sacked the Temple. They also plundered and killed Italian and Flemish merchants in the city. The king and his entourage sought refuge in the Tower of London.

The young king’s courage and determination seem remarkable but his action also illustrates the position of the king in contemporary society. Peasant rebels normally directed their anger at the nobles and the king’s officials but respected the king and often believed that he was on their side. According to Harriss, the whole meeting, including the killing of Wat Tyler, had been planned in advance and Tyler’s arrogant behaviour was the result of provocation. The leaders of the central government, including the king, wanted severe reprisals afterwards, but the local authorities resisted, not out of sympathy with the rebels but for pragmatic reasons. Too great severity might lead to new unrest. The result was that the leaders were sought out and many of them executed, but otherwise, punishment mostly came in the form of fines rather than executions.

Concerning the aims of the rebels, there were elements of millenarianism, notably in the sermons by the preacher John Ball, who pointed to the Christian doctrine of the equality of all men, expressed in the sentence: ‘When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then a gentleman?’ There were also some references to Wycliffe. The most important motives seem nevertheless to have been immediate anger over taxes and other burdens and concrete proposals for reform: personal freedom for the peasants, land rent fixed to 4 pence for an acre, free contracts between peasants and lords and free buying and selling.

It has been commented that peasant rebellions were an essential element of agrarian society in the same way as strikes in industrial society. There were always conflicts of interest but on the other hand, the aim of the rebellions was rarely the total abolition of the landowning class. More often, they concerned specific burdens, particularly new ones, or they were sparked off by special circumstances. The great peasant rebellion in France in 1358, which coincided with Etienne Marcel’s rebellion in Paris, was the result of the English devastation of the French countryside which the French king and nobles had been unable to prevent.¹⁶³ The Hungarian rebellion of 1514 developed from the mobilization of a large peasant army for a Crusade against the Turks. The nobles were against this, as they wanted the peasants for work on the land. Moreover, the provisioning of the army led to plundering, particularly of noble residences. The peasants also refused to pay taxes. When Archbishop Tomas Bakocz who had originally organized the Crusade, was pressured by the nobles to suspend recruitment, a full rebellion broke out.¹⁶⁴

The great peasant rebellion in Germany, 1524—25. was partly provoked by Luther’s Reformation.¹⁶⁵ The attack on the Church, the greatest landowner in the country and Luther’s proclamation of the freedom of the Christian might easily be turned into a social revolt. However, the peasants also had a number of concrete grievances about oppression and taxes, extension of labour services, restriction of informal rights to access to wood, water and grazing, imposition of new obligations and the extension of fines and penalties.

There have been widely different interpretations of the peasant rebellions. To the Marxists, they were the expression of a deep conflict of interest between the peasants and the landowning classes, as expressed by Marx and Engels themselves, and modern historians, such as Rodney Hilton in his interpretation of the English peasant rebellion.¹⁶⁶ An opposite point of view is represented by French scholars, such as Roland Mousnier and Guy Fourquin, who point to religious ideas and particular grievances as their causes and to the fact that most leaders of the rebellion were well-to-do people, often belonging to the aristocracy.

Concerning the relationship between the peasants and the elite, there is a clear contrast between the centre and the periphery of Europe, the flat, densely popu­lated areas in the central zone versus the forested and mountainous areas to the north and south. The great peasant rebellions and the conflicts between the pea­sants and the authorities are characteristic of the former region, while the peasants had greater liberty and to a greater extent governed themselves in the latter. In these regions, the king or the prince might often conduct much of the local gov­ernment through the peasant communities or peasant representatives might them­selves form the government, as in parts of Scandinavia and the Swiss Confederacy.¹⁶⁷

Ordinary people were less likely to have interests in matters of state, but as the example of the Engelbrekt and Hussite rebellions show, they might resent being governed by foreigners. In addition, even peasants were organized at the local level and might try to address the king and the governing elite with petitions or, if these failed, resort to open rebellion. The English rebellions in the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries which will be discussed in Chapter 5 were not confined to the nobility, but also included a considerable number of people from the lower ranks of society, although gentry and yeomen rather than ordinary peasants. These latter layers of society were also represented in the House of Commons in Parlia­ment which became an important and influential part of the assembly during the later Middle Ages.

The king usually had little direct influence on the peasants in the beginning. This gradually changed from the thirteenth century onwards and particularly in the early modern period, with increasing taxation and the development of royal jur­isdiction. The peasants might appeal to the king against their lord or they might seek protection from the lord against taxes and other demands from the king. It seems that the latter was the more common. In France, between 1360 and 1775, peasant revolts were almost exclusively directed at royal taxation or other financial demands.¹⁶⁸ The military mobilization under Richelieu was a particularly violent period.¹⁶⁹ At this time, however, the peasants often had support from other groups, even members of the elite; the rebellions were not confined to the peasants but were often the expression of reactions against interference in local affairs by the central authorities. A number of issues led to protest: new regulations, the billeting of soldiers — who often oppressed their hosts or raped their wives or daughters — various indirect taxes or regulations of the economy. In some areas, like Burgundy, where the lords had extensive control over the peasants, they might also protect them against demands from the central authorities. In principle, lordship not only involved authority but also protection; traditionally, lords were supposed to aid their peasants against famine and other disasters.¹⁷⁰ The number of rebellions decreased during the reign of Louis XIV, hardly because the demands from the state became less but because the government had increased its control of the elites.

Thus, the increasing power of the state did not generally improve the condition of the peasants. Nevertheless, the rivalry between their lord and the king gave them some opportunities to ally with one of them against the other; they might sue their lords at the royal courts and might even in some cases win their suits. As appears from the example of the English rebellion of 1381, the peasants often appealed to the king and regarded him as their protector, while blaming his officers and the nobility for injustice and oppression. Although kings rarely had any parti­cular sympathy with the peasants, this belief was certainly an important factor in the development of monarchy. It would seem that the financial burden on the peasants increased with the development of the state, although to some extent, the increasing taxes were compensated for by reduced dues to the lord in the period after the Black Death.

Finally, even if the state was a burden more than an aid for the peasants and their belief that the king was their friend was often an illusion, one condition was even worse than the presence of the state, namely, its break-down. Whereas a country like France after the fifteenth century was mostly strong enough to conduct its external wars in the enemy’s country, the civil war of 1562—98 was a terrible dis­aster.¹⁷¹ Both parties used mercenaries who fought to gain booty and plundered where they went, in addition to the cruelties resulting from religious fanaticism. The peasants were not passive victims but organized to protect themselves and in some cases managed to defeat the invaders, although they were usually defeated and often massacred in pitched battles.